


The Twelve Steps (to a chalk outline)

by doctor_jasley, gala_apples



Series: S. K. Anon [1]
Category: Bandom, Cobra Starship, Ke$ha (Musician), My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco, The Academy Is...
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Domestic, Falling In Love, M/M, Multi, Photography
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-09
Updated: 2013-12-13
Packaged: 2018-01-04 02:45:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 74,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1075601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctor_jasley/pseuds/doctor_jasley, https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“My name is Ryland, and it's been four days since I eviscerated someone.”<br/>“Hi Ryland!”</p>
<p>Gerard has been running Serial Killers Anonymous for a while now, and it’s a good outlet for them all. Things start to change though, when he finally confronts Mikey about what he’s been doing the nights he gets back from the bar after dawn. Mikey agrees to go to placate his brother/boyfriend, not because he feels remorse. If they really didn’t want to die, they’d be more interesting when they beg for their life.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Brendon’s just had an amicable break-up with Jon, a fact he could not convince his best friend Ryan of in a million years. Unfortunately for him, Brendon has to listen to Ryan’s rants about awful boyfriends all day as they work together in Ryan’s fashion boutique. He’s out urban exploring for Ryan’s ~inspiration~ when he stumbles upon SK Anon. It’s easy to fall in love. After all, they’re reformed, right?</p>
<p>The problem comes when one of the S K Anon members reverts to their old ways, triggering a collective jump off the wagon. However, with every cloud comes silver lining, and giving in doesn’t always make you weak. Sometimes it takes action to make a house a home, and a group a family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains non-descriptive past sexual abuse of a minor, dub-con (not between MCs), incest, light kink, hard drug use (heroin), graphic murder scenes, mentions of cannibalism committed by a secondary character, and offensive language.
> 
> Despite all that, it's an oddly humourous, light hearted serial killer AU? We blame Ryan Ross, diva extraordinaire.

Nights like these, Mikey always wears skintight black jeans. The t-shirts change, usually between movie references and band shirts, but it’s always the same pair of skintight black jeans. He’s got a dozen pairs of converse in the hall closet, buys them clearance and gets Gee to doodle on them when he’s bored. Gerard likes his skate shoes better but that’s because he’s a lazy bastard and once you tie a pair of skate shoes you never have to untie them again. High tops don’t allow for the same.

He always grabs a few bracelets and snaps them on before he leaves the bedroom for the last time. Worse comes to worst and they look like they’re going to snag someone’s hair he can stuff them in his pocket. Another check to make sure his hair looks good and another douse of hairspray and he’s done in the bathroom. Everything is firmly in place, no possibility of shedding.

Gerard is sitting in the living room, reading something. There’s a bowl of half eaten cereal on the middle cushion, but on further examination the milk looks kind of chunky so it’s probably not Gee’s dinner. When he pushes his lips against his brother’s and sweeps his tongue in briefly he doesn’t taste like milk either. “You want me to call for pizza before I leave?”

“If you’ll have some when you get back it might be a good idea.” Which is Gerard speak for _if it’s here I will eat it and if it’s not I will probably forget to eat altogether_. Mikey would say it’s the comic Gee’s reading that will keep him from remembering, but Gerard’s always been like that. Either he’ll forget to eat, or he’ll end up with three bags of chips vanquished, the crumpled remains laying around him, after only a few hours of sitting down to read or watch a movie.

Mikey thinks about it. It’s possible that he might be ok with pizza later, but there’s also a chance that he'll forget it’s even on the couch next to the old bowl of cereal when he gets in. He's not usually hungry when he gets home from a night like tonight. He walks into the kitchen anyways, pulling the phone from it’s home bolted into the wall. The local joint knows them by voice; Mikey doesn’t have to give them his name or address.  All of the local take out places know them by sight and sound, they’re not exactly big fans of cooking. 

He hangs up the phone. Gerard’s still reading on the couch. The cereal bowl however is listing on it’s side, lumpy milk dripping onto the floor. Gerard’s not paying attention to it. It’s not violating the comic’s glossy pages so it doesn’t exist. Mikey looks at it for a second and kicks a discarded pair of boxers from near the front door in the general direction of the spill. It’ll fix itself. 

His shoes tumble out of the closet near the door when he opens it, like always. Mikey doesn’t really care what pair he wears, he just wants a matching set so he doesn’t look like a complete retard. You can’t wear one shoe with Legolas and Merry and Pippin, and another shoe with Darth, that’s fucking lame. The first pair he finds are the ones with System Of A Down lyrics, he ties the laces while automatically grabbing for a jacket that’s not hanging. Three years and he’s still not used to not getting a second layer in January.

“Who do you want me to pick up?” Mikey asks from the front door. It’s the way it’s always worked. He likes working within prompts, likes having to get creative sometimes. Sometimes it’s easy, Gerard says blond hair and he can pick from half the club. But if he says white jeans, Mikey might have to pick someone with jeans torn to ratshit where it’s half denim and half white thread.

“Don’t,” is Gerard’s answer. 

The fuck? Mikey crosses to stand in front of Gerard. “The fuck?” This is not the way they work. This is not the way they fucking _work_ , Gerard can’t just _do_ this to him. 

“Just don’t. Not tonight, okay?”

Fuck. That. Mikey’s waited weeks for this, tonight is the fucking night. If Gerard doesn’t want to participate he’ll ask the gas station attendant or something. The hunk of shit car gas gauge is broken, it always hovers just over empty, but Mikey usually fills it before he gets into the car because he knows Gee never remembers, and he _always_ fills it before nights like tonight. 

“See you later,” he mutters, grabbing his keys. The first attempt at trying to open the door fails, they get caught on the pile of shoes. Mikey kicks them a few inches towards the closet until he can suck in his stomach and squeeze out the door. He’s not going to let Gerard fucking up the routine ruin his night.

***

Mikey hasn’t been gone long when there’s a knock on the front door. Gerard gets up from the couch and ventures toward the door. His left foot slides over a wet patch being covered by some semi-dirty underwear and he just nudges the fabric closer to the couch. It would be good if he didn’t brain himself on the coffee table.

It doesn’t take long to pay the delivery woman and Gerard sets the pizza on the coffee table after opening the box and snagging a piece. Tomato sauce drips onto his somewhat stiff shirt, but it doesn’t really show so he doesn’t need to change.

Gerard starts sifting through the spilled pile of shoes Mikey left near the door. His one pair is at the bottom and Gerard shoves them on, tugging on the double knotted strings to make sure they won’t come undone. If he leaves now he can make it to a meeting a couple of blocks away. Gerard doesn’t know that he actually needs to go to the AA meetings anymore. But they make him feel important, like he’s there to help someone at that crucial point when they really have to have someone there to catch them so they don’t fall. 

The words come off his tongue almost by rote. He doesn’t have a calendar to count days or anything, he’s not even sure if they have a calendar anywhere in the house. Probably, Mikey somehow always knows what shifts they’re working, what days he has to go to university.  That doesn’t mean he knows where it is, exactly. Mikey’s better at that stuff than he is. Still, he knows the general length he’s been sober. _His_ meetings have been going on for five months, and it was a year before that that he stopped drinking and started going to the AA meetings.

Gina, who’s sitting to his right, is nervously fiddling with her token and Gerard worries about her. Her father was a mean drunk and her mother was a maudlin one. Stuck at the bottom of a bottle is her only default setting. The last time he cycled around to this particular meeting spot she hadn’t been sober a day before she fell off the wagon and her sponsor Miles had to pull her from bingeing. 

The chair to his left is empty. Cole is probably at home with his uncle. Gerard wonders if Cole still has to talk about his nightmares so he doesn’t go for the whiskey to calm his swirling thoughts. The meeting isn’t any different. Nothing drastic happens. Someone cries and someone else details all the people they wrote apology letters to and Gerard spaces out for a minute, thinking about the past a little but not in a depressed way. Sasha is just calling for break when Gerard’s front jean pocket vibrates. He automatically drifts to the corner of the room as he presses the green accept button. The screen is cracked and he can’t read who it is, but his contract isn’t up for a year and he and Mikey cannot afford the sort of fee that breaking a plan comes with. 

“Hey bitch!”

Gerard’s first reaction is to check behind him. Kesha’s not the sort of person you want to let sneak up behind you. The room is safe, of course, she wouldn’t drop her bottle of Jack if someone paid her a million dollars. Environment scanned he answers. “Hey Kesha, what’s going on?”

“Oh, you know. Wanna get laid. Wanna have a good meal. Wanna have world peace. All that lovely shit.”

He gestures then remembers she can’t actually see that. “Don’t have any world peace in my pocket, wanna take a raincheck?”

“Bet you know where I could get a good lay though. Could come over, give you and Mikes a whirl. He’s got some niiiiiice hips.”

Gerard doesn’t get pissed at Gina, and he’s not gonna get pissed at Kesha. Everyone’s got their ways of dealing with their desires. “Mikey’s busy, he’s at the bar. How do you know what his hips are like anyway?”

“Stole your phone that time I grabbed your ass, looked through your pictures. Photo albums are like fuckin’ menus, ya know?” 

Gerard really doesn’t remember her stealing his phone, but then when Kesha cops a feel potential theft isn’t really the first concern that comes to mind. “Andy not around to cook you a meal?” Technically they don’t live together, but Kesha’s sort of high maintenance and Andy takes his buddy duties seriously.

“Nah, he’s out fucking protesting some paper company that uses too much bleach in their products. And before you get all high and fuckin’ mighty, yeah I went with him, his fellow protesters are harmless. Old hippie types, not angry college kids. He said it would be fine to take off, so I did. But then some guy on the bus said I had a nice ass and-”

“And you got hungry,” Gerard finishes for her. 

“Maybe just a nibble,” she giggles. 

“If I get you off will you order a pizza or some Chinese?”

“Depends on how good you are, doesn’t it?” Gerard sighs, and moves quickly to the bathroom at the back of the building. If the meeting is running on normal schedule -and of all the different groups Gerard’s been to, Sasha’s the best with keeping things on time- he’s got about fifteen minutes to get this done.

***

The kitchen light is bright but Brendon doesn’t care, it means he can see better. He doesn’t have work today so he’s cleaning until Jon comes back from visiting Tom. Technically he should probably be at his apartment folding the laundry he did earlier in the week, but Jon’s usually not as good with keeping his place clean. And Brendon’s usually over here most nights anyways, so his apartment won’t need more than a light dusting and the laundry sorted out and put up, while Jon’s apartment needs some work.

He’s listening to The Little Mermaid Soundtrack on his iPod, one ear bud in his right ear and the other tucked under the collar of his favourite faded red tee shirt. Ryan calls him odd for being a guy who would rather listen to Disney musicals about magic and love instead of pretentious loud songs about death and heartbreak, but Brendon just likes happy songs. Once he has all the trash collected he ties up the cinch sack and lugs it out Jon’s front door. The garbage chute isn’t far so he just leaves the door cracked a hair and hefts the heavy bag down the hallway.

When he gets back to Jon’s apartment the door’s somehow found a way to slip closed. Sometimes Brendon wonders if the door hates him because it never seems to stop doing this to him. He could leave the door wide freaking open and it would still find a way to silently swing shut. Jon always smiles at him and laughs a little when Brendon swears up and down that it loathes him.

Luckily, Brendon has a key so he lets himself back in. He drains the lukewarm murky water out of the sink and cuts the faucet on hot to start up a new sink full of sudsy water. Part of him is wondering if he should pilfer through Jon’s pantry for something easy to cook, but Jon seems to have a thing about Brendon cooking and would rather have take out than something cooked ninety percent of the time. So instead, he cuts off the faucet and sets about sliding slightly crusty cereal bowls into the sink.

He’s dancing in front of the sink, soap suds crawling up and down his arms, to “Under the Sea” when he hears Jon’s key slide into the front door lock. It’s mostly the soap that prevents him from flouncing to the front door for a kiss, maybe a light bit of the Ryan that sits on top of his brain mocking him for being the perfect housewife. He doesn’t need to hear mental-Ryan ask _are you going to raise your leg so it just brushes the bottom of your poodle skirt too?_.

It only takes Jon a second to come into the kitchen anyway. His hand is a bit sweaty on Brendon’s shoulder, but if Brendon touched him Jon’s would be soaking wet, so whatever. “We need to talk.”

Brendon grins, not that Jon can see it. Jon and Tom hang out for a few hours after work almost every day. It’s not a lot compared to the eight hour shifts Brendon works with Ryan, but Brendon definitely understands the need to have that best friend time. About six days a week Jon comes home stoned, which maybe fifteen year old Brendon wouldn’t have understood, but adult him knows the fun in it. And whenever Jon is stoned he gets fascinated with life in general. He might smoke a bowl and come out of the bathroom saying ‘we need to talk. Did you know peeing sitting down is actually relaxing, not emasculating at all’, or smoke a bowl and wash the dishes while informing him that ‘we need to talk. Did you know glass is actually make from sand, isn’t that awesome’, or rip from a bong and tell him ‘we need to talk about why popcorn ceilings are called popcorn, cause they don’t really look like bits of popcorn’. All of it is entertaining, and about half the time Brendon will light up so he can join Jon’s level of conversation.

He waits for Jon to continue telling him about some basic fact that’s completely amazing. Instead Jon says quietly, “Tom broke off his engagement with Anastasia.”

Brendon is not one for swearing, not normally. Fifteen years of Mormon upbringing does that to a boy. But this is a time where can envision himself saying _oh, fuck_. He won’t, because Jon will hear the wrong message in the words. Even now, knowing what’s coming, Brendon doesn’t want that. But he could, he wants to.

From what Brendon’s been able to weasel out of Jon, Jon’s pretty much been in love with Tom for years. He just never thought he had a snowball’s chance in hell so he pushed the feelings down and took what Tom was willing to give him. Brendon’s never considered himself second fiddle, because Jon really is a good boyfriend, leagues above all of Brendon’s exes. But he’s worried off and on about the day Tom finally realized that he was just as caught up in Jon as Jon was in him for awhile now. The day’s finally shown up and Brendon’s not sure what he should do. Jon hasn’t exactly come out and said why Tom broke off the engagement. He doesn’t have to. Brendon could put up a fight and hold on tight, because that’s what you’re supposed to do right? But he knows he can’t do that. 

“Can I get a hug before I start gathering my socks?” he manages to ask. 

“Brendon Urie, you better know you _never_ have to ask if you can have a hug,” Jon answers fiercely. Brendon turns and soapy arms be damned, he curls into Jon for what he hopes isn’t the last time. Friends can hug, right?

***

Mikey really loves fingering Gerard. There are a thousand things to do in bed, maybe fifteen or twenty if you’re stupid or vanilla or old and handicapped, and Mikey’s enjoyed most of them, made sure that Gerard’s enjoyed most of them. But there’s just something about fingering Gerard that’s totally brilliant.

He would never say _I don’t know much about art but I know what I like hur hur hur_ to Gerard. If his brother didn’t actually hit him he’d have to hit himself for being so lame. It is essentially true though. Gerard’s working on his third year at art school, it should have been his fourth but the alcohol thing fucked him up for a bit. Mikey knows _nothing_ about art compared to him, and wouldn’t claim to understand anything in the theory books he’s got stacked in the art room. But he knows when thinner lines work better over thicker in a comic book, or how a certain colour or combinations of colours can make him feel shit. He might get ten words into a book about typography before tossing it for Chuck Palahniuk but he can at least sense contrast.

That’s part of what makes fingering Gerard so awesome. They’ve got navy sheets, and their skin almost glows against the fitted sheet. It’s a visual contrast Gerard’s got sketched a few dozen times, although it’s usually his fingers in Mikey that he draws out. There’s a scent contrast, strawberry-kiwi lube overpowering the way the room normally smells like spilled chocolate milk and sweat and socks. Gerard’s whimpers are like an orgasmic melody against the silence of the room. And of course there’s the feel of it, moving from Gerard’s sparsely haired thighs and sweet curve of his ass to the confined heat of being inside him. 

Mostly though he loves working his index and middle finger into his brother because Gee loves it too. Here in their house it’s okay for them to be like this. If they’d have stayed in Jersey things would be a hell of a lot different. Mikey doesn’t care to think about it. Jersey is all the way on the opposite coast and besides weekly calls from their mom that part of their lives is in the past. 

He’s going slow as payback for earlier and Gerard’s not complaining. Eventually he does have to speed his pace up because if he wants to go out tonight then he needs to be leaving soon or he’ll miss the window of time he usually likes to be out. Gee makes this one sweet sound and shudders under him and Mikey doesn’t say anything. He could be a smart ass younger brother right now but he’s far too pleased with himself to harsh the glow.

Mikey thinks about showering for a second. There’s really no point in it though, he’s just going to get sweaty again at the club. It’s not like he’s still covered in his own come; Gerard wiped it off with edge of the pillowcase. Mikey’s running a bit short on time, it’ll be better if he just get dressed. It doesn’t take long to find the right pair of jeans, they’re exactly where he put them after last time. By the time he’s changing into them, Gerard’s slowly propping himself up against the headboard of their bed just watching as Mikey switches clothing. 

“The choker you bought yesterday’s on the dresser. You should wear it.”

“You think?” He was thinking of wearing his Nightmare on Elm Street shirt, but the neck of it is stretched and won’t look good against the thin line of black lace.

“Your choker brings all the boys to the yard.”

Mikey cackles for a minute, then turns to look at him. “Seriously?”

“It’s not my fault Borders plays top forties. That shit worms it’s way into your brain.”

He snorts. “That song was out in like two thousand three. You so can’t blame Borders for that.”

“Wear the choker and get some hot girl or guy to tap that ass,” Gerard responds calmly.

“Okay, like you know how much you _can’t_ pull off gangster slang, right? I mean, you don’t think you pulled that shit off, right?” He calls out loudly as he walks into the bathroom to check his hair. It’s not too bad. Sex hair isn’t his usual look, but he likes it. He clamps his eyes shut and sprays it into place from all directions. 

Once back in the room he crawls back onto the bed for a second to grab Gee’s still sensitive dick. He eats his gasp from his parted lips, then pulls away and says “theirs for a night, yours forever. See you later.”

“Love you too. Might be sleeping when you get back, you said I have an early shift, right?”

“Yeah. Night then.” Mikey smiles one last time and leaves.

***

Gerard doesn’t listen for Mikey locking the door, but he’s sure he does. There will probably be a massive fire hazardy pile of shoes in front of the door too. Which hey, that could _work_.

It’s a few steps down the hall to his art room, and grabs the nearest sketch book as he starts to draw talking shoes being trapped in the closet of a woman half composed of plastic. Her soon to be ex-husband is burning the house down rather than pay the divorce settlement, and while the plan backfires for him as she escapes, the shoes are trapped as the bedroom slowly starts filling with smoke. It’s sort of the anti-Cars. He’s not exactly planning on being hired by Pixar when he’s done school. To be perfectly honest, he’s not sure he wants to be hired by any animation company. He loves the shit out of drawing and painting, could spend forever doing it. If he lived alone he’d probably spend eighteen hours a day drawing. 

He lives with Mikey though. Gerard sleeps beside him and eats with him and downloads music with him, and he works with him in a supposedly temporary job stocking books almost every day of the week. And he’s not sure if that’s something he wants to give up. He doesn’t _like_ Borders, but he likes the conditions that Borders comes with. 

The charcoal smudges to the left and blurs his lines some when he uses his index finger to soften the outline of the right shoe. It’s trapped under a stack of closed boxes. The left shoe can’t get to it and smoke slips through the door. In a last ditch effort, in the next panel, the left shoe shakes most of its laces out of its eyelets and tosses the grey, white make shift rescue rope towards its partner. 

Gerard finishes the panel and flips the page. The panel he draws first is of the partially plastic woman leaning against a tree in her yard watching her house burn, one arm sagging some from the heat that’s made her left side squishy and runny. Once he’s done making the scene as dark and morbid as possible he draws a partitioning line. The left shoe is still trying to help the right shoe out from under the boxes, but the smoke is making it hard for the right shoe to breathe. Eventually in the last panel, the left shoe curls its laces around the right shoe and closes it’s little personified eyes. The flames are closer and it could leave but it’s not going to because the right shoe can’t and there’s no way the left shoe is going abandon its partner.

Once he’s finished, Gerard places his sketch book down and heads in the direction of the kitchen. There should still be a half empty bottle of flat root beer in the back of the first shelf. He’s pretty sure it’s even the kind without caffeine in it. 

The bottle isn’t on the top shelf. Gerard doesn’t give up though and he finds it on the bottom shelf behind a murky jug of old milk. He fishes the root beer out and unscrews the cap. Despite the name it’s nowhere close to alcohol, but that’s a good thing. Somewhere out in the distant reaches of LA Mikey is chugging down a cooler. Probably a Bacardi Breezer, at least when Mikey used to drink with him rum was always his favourite. He doesn’t begrudge his brother the opportunity. Mikey hasn’t drunk inside the house since the first day Gerard stopped drinking seventeen months ago, and he’s never so much as tipsy by the time he gets back home. 

Nor does Gerard begrudge him the chance to get fucked by other guys. How can he, when he knows the stranger won’t even have to prep him, Mikey still stretched from what they did in the bedroom? It’s fucking _hot_ , imagining him not being able to keep his groans in on the backseat of some car in the parking lot of a club. Even if the image didn’t make Gerard want to jerk off, it’s still better knowing it’s a ‘Mikey gets fucked’ night than one of the others. 

Gerard might not be picking out people for Mikey anymore, but that doesn’t mean Mikey’s stopped. Gerard’s been an addict, he knows removing one source just means finding another. It just makes him feel better that it’s not him. He won’t enable Kesha, he won’t enable Ryland, and he’s not going to enable Mikey. Even if he is everything to him.

***

There’s not a speck of dust in his apartment. Okay, that’s a lie and Brendon knows it. He can’t stop skin cell degeneration though, so as long as he’s still in the apartment there’s still going to be dust. He’s not going to think about the mites and other unnoticeable things that cause dust and dirt to accumulate. So yeah, the point is his apartment is clean. All his clothing is folded and put away. No dishes need to be washed and there’s not enough trash in the place to warrant him gathering it and dragging it down to the first floor lobby and out to the dumpster.

He’s been working more than he should to keep his mind off of Jon. They’ve talked over the phone twice since last week. And while both conversations had been short Brendon’s not angry. Extremely sad, yeah, but he’s not angry and that has to count for something? So when he finds himself stuck in his apartment he cleans until he’s able to fall asleep, which isn’t easy because he’s not used to sleeping alone anymore.

It’s Thursday though and Thursdays used to be animated movie cuddle night for them. Brendon’s not sure he’ll be able to watch Aladdin for a few more months without having to switch the tv off and just curl into himself. He’s okay. This hurts, but he’s okay. Or at least he keeps telling himself that. Jon’s happy with Tom and they’re probably leaning against each other and smoking up together. 

One lone dust bunny is hiding from him when there’s the sound of rapid fire knocking on his front door. Brendon ignores the door and tries to reach his broom under the corner of the dvd stand near his tv. He can’t have that dust bunny staying where it is. Like all bunnies if left to its own devices it will _multiply_ and Brendon doesn’t want that to happen. The knocking happens again, loud and annoying, and Brendon concedes defeat for the moment. The dust bunny can live for another couple of minutes because if he doesn’t answer the door his neighbours might call the super about him.  

Brendon can just barely peer through the safety eyehole if he stands on his tiptoes. The knocker is Ryan. There’s not a _chance_ that Brendon is dealing with Ryan trying to deal with him right now. He didn’t say anything at work, but Brendon knows Ryan knows about Thursday night, considering he’s mocked them about it for the last ten months. If he lets Ryan in he’s going to go with the Ryan Ross patented Supportive Best Friend move of ‘bitch out the ex as hard as possible, and hold extreme grudges’. That might work for Spencer in San Diego, and it even worked for Brendon when it was Shawn, who cheated on him with a woman and told Brendon he wasn’t actually gay, but it’s not okay for Jon.

Ryan can somehow sense that Brendon’s looking at him through the eyehole. His voice is lower than it would be if Ryan thought he had to yell through the apartment to be heard. “I’m going to kick down the door if you don’t open it!” 

Brendon wants to laugh, because _seriously_? Ryan Ross, kicking down a door? Candles will begin to actually sing before Ryan Ross has the capacity to kick open anything. Instead he moves away from the door a few feet for reputation’s sake and calls back “you have a key!”

“I don’t know where I put it. I looked through the shop before I left, but it wasn’t anywhere there, so I knew it had to be at home, but it wasn’t there either. Maybe Spencer has it.”

“Spencer lives two and a half hours away, why does he have my spare key?” He doesn’t even know why he’s asking, Spencer has it because it’s Ryan. 

“You gonna let me in, or do I have to kick it down?”

“I say this will every bit of love I can, Ross. If you’re going to try to kick down a door you need to let me set up a tripod in the hallway first so I can have the video of it forever. Your grandchildren would weep if I didn’t record it.”

“Shut your stupid face,” Ryan says pleasantly. Brendon unlocks the door, because either he has a conversation through the door the whole night or he lets Ryan in and they have conversation sitting down. Ryan was in the back all day designing which meant Brendon was on the floor standing for eight hours, he’d like to appreciate his couch instead of the varnish on the door.

Ryan shuffles in with a plastic bag hanging loosely from his left hand. Brendon’s not sure what to think because there’s no telling what Ryan brought. He could have a box full of scrap construction paper in there. It’s possible. One night he woke Brendon up at three a.m. with a travel case shoved full of fabric samples and thread color swatches. Brendon gave up trying to figure out how Ryan thinks years ago.

The bag ends up having a square carton of strawberry ice cream -the carton’s squishy and there’s pink melted ice cream seeping from the corners of the carton- and a box of small children sized wafer cones. Brendon laughs, because while Ryan can’t be serious Brendon knows he is. Only Ryan Ross would think misery food would consist of Jon’s favourite flavour of ice cream and wafer cones. There’s not even a spoon in the bag.

Brendon just stares when Ryan sets the sticky and leaking carton on his freshly polished coffee table. He’s not fast enough to stop him. Ryan flips open the carton. The opaque plastic flutters when he pulls it back. Fat drops of pink ice cream plop down on the coffee table top and Brendon doesn’t want to watch this disaster in the making, but at the same time he needs video proof that this is happening. It’s always good to have Youtube available blackmail material laying around. 

Simply put, it’s the most poorly constructed ice cream cone Brendon has ever seen in his life. Ryan stares at the carton for a moment then actually tries to use the corner of the carton lid to scoop the first bit of ice cream. Brendon wants to cackle, but he also wants to not have ice cream on the ceiling so he makes a tactical retreat into the kitchen for a spoon. Things don’t get much better after that. Ryan can’t seem to manage getting a scoop off his spoon and into the cone, he has to pry the first scoop off with his index and middle finger, then push them into the depths of the cone. The second scoop he takes he presses the spoon in far too deep and removes about half the carton heaving it back up. Brendon can’t hold in his laughter as Ryan stares at the toast sized square of ice cream on the end of his spoon, but he tries to hold his iPhone steady.

The piece de resistance is when Ryan can’t get the massive cube to stick to the top of the cone, and presses hard enough with his spoon holding right hand that somehow the thumb of his left hand goes through the middle of the cone. Ryan looks at his thumb as though he has no idea how this is possible, while Brendon occupies himself with falling off the couch and crying with laughter on the floor. He does however manage to hold his right arm up for a zoom in on Ryan’s embedded thumb.

“Here,” Ryan says, holding it out as he pries his thumb out. Brendon takes the ice cream cone in one hand, and sends Spencer a copy of the video with the other. He labels it _best shit evar!_ because seriously, it’s going to be a while before Ryan tops this.

The night progresses and Brendon can’t help but notice that he doesn’t actually mention Jon, never mind blacken his character utterly and completely. Failcone or not, Ryan’s maybe growing up a little.

***

The sky’s starting to lighten slightly when Mikey gets home. He shouldn’t have stayed out so late. He’s got work soon. Also with the light slowly creeping out for the day it’s somewhat easier to tell that his black jeans are filthy. Not that anyone’s going to get close enough to figure out what exactly is coating them.

It doesn’t take long for him to unlock the front door and shuffle inside. He almost trips over the pile of shoes mingling in front of the door. Flip flops and socks are not conducive to walking through a mire of converse so he steps over them the best he can. The itch under his skin is calm. He had a good night. It’s been awhile since he got to play and while he wasn’t happy about having to ask the gas station clerk to pick a color for him not even that blackened his mood. Now he’s home, and he can shower and crawl into bed with Gee. Maybe he can get a couple of hours of sleep before their banshee of an alarm clock starts to screech.  

It’s nothing horrible that Gerard is sitting in the living room, awake. In the three and a half years since he started playing it’s happened a few times. Gerard isn’t exactly known for having a good concept of time, and he doesn’t have class until noon today anyway. Maybe the first time it scared the ever-loving shit out of him, but Mikey’s grown up since then. He knows how to keep his voice the same pitch and tone as always, knows how to not show off that fine extra edge of happy and relaxed. Even Gerard pulling him in for a kiss is fine. If his clothes are a bit stiff his brother will put it off to spilled beer and sweat. It’s only getting naked with Gee that would ruin things. It’s hard to explain away legs coated in slowly browning blood.

“Hey, Gee. The girl, shit, she must have been new to California. She said her name was Sheena but she was changing it to Selena for her stage name, I wanted to get laid so I didn’t tell her no director would give a shit. I’m later than normal, I know, but it was already four and she worked opening shift at a grocery store and asked me to drive her to work. She blew me a second time in the parking lot, it was great.” Not only is it an entirely believable explanation, it’ll also stop Gerard from wanting to have sex before he gets out of the shower.

“No she didn’t.”

Mikey frowns, still standing at the doorway. Normally if Gerard’s in a snit Mikey deals with it physically, if not fucking it out of him than by a snuggle, but his jeans are flakey and Gerard might notice. “What?”

“Why do you do this?”

Mikey frowns further. They both mess around with other people, a practice since Jersey and having to appear to have girlfriends or boyfriends. Jealousy is pretty much conditioned out of them. And they talked about this when they moved, about if they were going to be exclusive since they didn’t have to pretend anymore. Neither of them wanted to. Part of Mikey wants to protest this is not the time for this argument, he has to get up for work in four hours. But it isn’t the kind of thing you can just leave, drama like this will fester and turn everything to shit. And Mikey’s not willing to let things with Gerard turn to shit, even if he has to pull an all-nighter and intravenously inject caffeine at work. “I thought you were cool with it, I thought you agreed that-”

“Not the fucking. We both know you weren’t fucking some girl named Shelly, Mikes.”

Mikey stutters a laugh, and immediately winces at himself. That is not any reaction he’d normally have, and it’s absolutely crucial he appear normal. “Yeah, I wasn’t. Sheena, I said.”

“You saying it doesn’t make it true. You were out relieving stress.”

“Yessss?” Mikey draws out.

Gerard stands as he shakes his head. It’s only a few steps until he’s against Mikey. Mikey’s nostrils have been full of blood for the last five hours, he has no idea if the scent truly lingers on him or if he's just smelling things. Gerard’s hand is on Mikey's face as he looks at him and says “No. You were out relieving stress like I used to. You were taking people out. _Killing_ them.”

Mikey has no idea how Gerard knows, can’t even begin to think about what he’s saying about doing what he used to. He doesn’t want this revelation and how it’ll make everything change. He tries one last effort to make it go away. “I think you’ve gone loopy from watching Scream channel, Gee.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way. You can stop.”

He snorts. Might as well be honest until the cops come. “Why would I _stop_?”

“Well, death row means we can’t see each other anymore. Not that I’m telling shit-all to anyone. But chances are you’ll get caught at some point, and that would be super shitty for the both of us.”

Mikey pauses because oddly enough, that’s actually a really good reason. At least Gerard didn’t go with some argument along the lines of  ‘it’s wrong’.  Mikey hasn’t been doing anything wrong so he doesn’t feel guilty about what he does. He’s an adult and he can do what he wants. Gerard does have a good point though. It would suck if he got put behind bars. 

“I’ll think about it. For now I need to shower. You have class, but I have a ten to six shift. Lucky me.” He awkwardly starts stripping as he walks down the hallway. He’s not going to wash his hair, it’ll take too long to soap and condition and blow it straight. He’s pretty sure they still have a shower cap in the cabinet below the sink.

***

Mikey’s gone in the morning when Gerard wakes up. Which isn’t really a surprise, he’s a pretty heavy sleeper and Mikey can be pleasantly quiet. He took the car, which Gerard can understand because bussing to work would involve him getting up at quarter to nine instead of nine thirty, and when he has a late night every extra minute of sleep counts. It sucks to be him though, Gerard fucking hates bussing to class.

Luckily Mikey is the best brother ever, and has essentially prepared everything else he can for Gerard. There’s a route planned out for him duct-taped to the coffee maker telling him what stop to get on, where to transfer, and where to get off. His iPod is beside his house keys, his backpack is at the door beside his art room. And there are actually slices of bread in the toaster waiting for him. Gerard’s pretty happy the toaster isn’t _on_ , Mikey did that one time before leaving the house and Gerard woke up coughing, smoke alarm shrilling. The bottom of the cabinet is still black, neither of them have felt like repainting it. 

Gerard’s the kind of guy who needs easy listening in the morning until his ears wake up. Mikey would laugh at him, but Gerard presses his face against the warm glass of the bus and lets The Fray filter in. By the time he gets to class he’ll want to replace it with the Distillers, but for now it keeps the creepy guy beside him from trying to start up a conversation without making him hate mornings and their inherent too-loud-too-brightness more.

By the time he’s finally stepping off of the last transfer bus, his iPod has cycled through to “Wasted Years”. The building his class is being held in isn’t far from the stop, which is good because Gerard isn’t exactly the biggest fan of exercising unless he has to.  He adjusts the strap of his backpack and heads in the direction of his class. The sooner he gets it over with the better his day will be.

No doubt it’ll be another day of watching student made shorts. Another day where their professor wants them to be brutal without even a curving scale to grade the shorts by. Gerard hates that he’s expected to be a dick and completely trash talk someone’s work. Art is art, even if some people are better at certain aspects of it than others. What’s even more great and perfect is that the professor will want everyone in class to vocally pick a short and tell everyone else in the room how they’d fix the film up and make it work, implying that the films are in need of repair before they can hold any truths or beauty. He can’t afford to skip the class though, not after the disaster that was second year. He’s just going to have to suffer through it. 

After two hours of lying through his teeth and wanting to point out the praise worthy parts of each film out loud and in extreme detail, the professor dismisses class and Gerard gathers his stuff so he can leave. Thank everything good in the world that he doesn’t have this class every day. It’s three minutes after two and he doesn’t have another class until three. There’s only one thing that can mean; Gerard can take a break and get a cup of coffee. It’s not morning anymore, but coffee doesn’t have a ‘only drink when the hours are between five am and nine am’ label for him or Mikey. So he sets off for one of the local coffee places near campus, because there’s no way he’s going to the tiny cramped one in the student center. It’s always way too busy and their black brewed coffee could probably put a vibrating hyperactive child to sleep. 

The Brew staff know him by sight. They probably know a lot of the students, and it’s not like they _talk_ to him, so he doesn’t consider himself all that special, but it’s cool that he can walk in and they’re prepare his mix without having to officially order. It’s always ready by the time he’s first in line, as is his cinnamon bun. He’s not really a breakfast foods at breakfast time sort of guy, but there’s something wrong with you as a human if you can’t enjoy a cinnamon bun. 

He’s paging through a textbook, careful to only turn it with the hand that’s not covered in gooey icing -normally he wouldn’t care, but he’s pretty much banking on being able to resell these books at the end of the year, and some people are overly picky when it comes to page folds and highlighters and stains- when someone jostles his chair. Gerard curls his leg around one of the chair legs and wriggles himself closer to the table without looking up. Then a hand darts into his line of vision and rips a chunk off his cinnamon bun. 

“The fuck?” he mutters, looking up. Unless it’s a five year old, someone’s about to get a bitchfest. It’s a coping mechanism. He can’t relieve his tension when it builds into something greater than himself, so he needs to take care of things before they escalate. 

It’s not a five year old, but it’s close. It’s Cash. “Put the chunk down and no one gets hurt.”

Cash raises his eyebrows. “No one would get hurt anyway. We don’t do that shit, remember buddy? Not no more.” He pops the chunk into his mouth.

Gerard calmly suppresses the urge to wrap the hood strings of Cash’s hoodie around his neck and start pulling. He’s not that person anymore. It’s just frustrating because he doesn’t have enough money for a second bun, all his change went into the metal fundraising for cancer -or whatever cause it is this week- box. He considers it penance for Mr Berg’s class; he’s a complete douchenozzle to strangers, and then he helps strangers. 

“So whatcha doin’ here, Waydog?”

Times like these, Gerard would really like to have a buddy to call to remind him why he can’t let his urges win. He’s the only one in S K Anon that doesn’t have one. He used to, but then Kevin went and murdered his brothers and now he’s serving two life sentences. “I have class down the street. Why are you here? Don’t you live in the opposite direction of here?”

“Yeah.”

“So you bussed here just for a doughnut, and then decided to eat mine instead of getting your own?”

“Cash Money does not _bus_. I drove.”

Fuck. Fuck. This has the potential to be really fucking bad. “Did you call Ryland first?”

“Oh fuck off, Waydog. I didn’t rack up any points. I told you, we don’t do that shit no more.” Cash scowls, and Gerard wishes for a moment that he had Mikey’s naturally inexpressive face. Instead he looks down and both his arms are up, and he doesn’t even remember starting to wave them around. “I’m lookin for a fuckin’ job, man. Can’t freeload off my friends forever, right?”

Which okay, Gerard can understand that, but the bus routes aren’t sparse. Public transportation is cheaper than gas and upkeep on a car anyways. “I thought the bus fare was cheaper than gas?”

“Chill out, seriously. It’s not like I burned a whole cd of that one Kelly Clarkson song and cruised around the area for an hour scoping things out. Gotta be reminded of the temptation sometimes. Wouldn’t wanna forget.”

Cash’s reasoning is sound, but still Gerard worries because Cash can be a little bit energetic during group. He would hate to see someone else fall off the wagon. If he’s a bit of a nagging mother about it sometimes well then he can’t help it. “So give them your resume, and I’ll see you-”

“Got it circled with exclamation marks in my day planner,” Cash smirks and saunters off. Gerard tears what’s left of his bun into smaller bits to savour it better.

***

In retrospect, Brendon possibly shouldn’t have mentioned his plan of going to the mall after work to get a new camera. Not a shitty Sears camera, he wants something worth a few hundred dollars. Jon had a Nikon, and more importantly Jon let him use his Nikon when they went walking and photographing. He can’t really afford that, but somehow he thinks buying a disposable isn’t going to measure up. And while he’s getting better with talking to Jon in the two months they’ve been broken up, Brendon wouldn’t let anyone touch his iPod, Ryan woudn’t let anyone touch his shears, and Jon’s not going to loan out his camera.

Getting his own camera is a first step -or okay, second or third step if he’s really being honest with himself- for getting on with his life. He’ll probably always be a little bit in love with Jon, but that’s okay because that’s natural. Brendon’s not delusional enough to want to get back together or anything like that. So he can deal. 

That doesn’t mean he’s used to waking up in his own bed every freaking morning. He’s not used to not being in some form of a relationship and even after two months it’s still a kick in the gut that he’s alone again. He can do this though. Being single isn’t that hard right? He’s still the same person he was three months ago. That hasn’t changed. He also has the urge to throttle Ryan, which isn’t new.

“Turning yourself into some twisted product of what you think he wants from you isn’t the way to go about this. You don’t want to be what that drug addicted son of a bitch wants you to be! Just because his straight except for Jon’s dick in his mouth jerkoff friend is a photographer too doesn’t mean you need to be.”

Brendon considers attempting to explain for about the seventeenth time that Tom and Jon having a shared interest in photography has nothing to do with it, then goes for the explanation that Ryan might actually comprehend. “All the clothes you’ve been doing for the last six months have been inspired by pictures I’ve taken. You package the original with the article when you mail it off. If I stop taking pictures you’d have to stop doing that. It’s like your signature now.”

Ryan flings his arms into the air and the yellow tape measure whips and hits him in the face. It’s a momentary respite as Ryan winces and blinks hard. But only momentary, because Brendon’s not lucky enough for Ryan to have given himself brain damage. “I’d burn my store to the ground if I thought it would get you away from Jon for good! What happens when you run out of toner? Are you going to go over to his apartment and convince Jon to share with a blowjob?”

Jesus Christ. Where is he even supposed to start? “If you burn down the store I’ll tell Spencer. Also, Jon is living with Tom in his house, so I wouldn’t even know where to find him. Not to mention that I wouldn’t prostitute myself for photography supplies. But while we’re on the subject? I don’t have a darkroom in my apartment and I have no idea how to develop my own anyway. And toner is something you put on your skin when you tan.”

“You know where Jon and Tom are living!” Of course that’s what Ryan has decided to focus on. “Why do you know- have you _talked_ to him? Please for the love of velour tell me you haven’t started to talk to that cretin!”

He knows it’s futile even as he opens his mouth, but he still says “you didn’t think he was a cretin when I was dating him for eight months.”

“I wasn’t aware of how much of a ass eating son of a whore scumcunt he was,” Ryan answers evenly. 

“Okay, I’m going to make a display in the front. You keep working on this vest, it needs to be out by Friday. _Friday_ , Ryan. I’m serious.” 

“I can hardly be expected to produce when-”

Brendon notices the sharp pain of his fingernails cutting moons into his palms, and actively focuses on loosening his fists. “No, Ryan. The client requested a upper body garment based on that photo three weeks ago. If it’s not done by Friday I have to refund him. Fucking finish it.”

Apparently the swear punctuates his words well enough, Ryan walks to the shelf and pulls down a few bolts of denim. Brendon nods once and heads to the tiny space at the front of the store. The Weather Today is two thirds workroom for Ryan and a few racks and tables for walk-ins. Normally he only goes out front when he hears the chimes at the door, but the less time he has to spend with Ryan the better. 

After three hours Brendon is about ready to impale himself with a hanger. Once you turn Ryan on you can’t turn him off, and normally Brendon would be laughing about the implied dirtiness of that sentence, but nothing in the world is funny right now. Nothing _can_ be funny when Ryan Ross is vengeful and has been non-stop ranting from the back of the store. Brendon can only guess the fringe he’s attaching is falling apart -he told him to not get it when he saw it at the flea market, but Ryan had insisted it was vintage and needed to be appreciated- because he’s frustrated, and has vented his frustration through Jon Walker being the worst human being ever. 

He’s got half an hour to close when he snaps. He tells Ryan he’s going to get his camera now and leaves. If he’s working he always closes, Brendon doesn’t trust Ryan to do it. He walks to the mall half expecting a call from the alarm company, that it’s blaring and Ryan can’t turn it off because he’s stuck in the metal bars that pull out or something else ridiculous. But screw it. If Ryan can bitch at him for over three hours about an ex than Ryan can suffer in a cage for the twenty minutes it’ll take firefighters to get there.


	2. Chapter 2

The guy in the passenger seat keeps spider walking his fingers across Mikey’s thigh and it’s slightly distracting. At this hour of the night though, traffic isn’t too much of a worry. It doesn’t take long for him to pull off near the abandoned subdivision he usually drives his hookups to. 

As soon as he parks, he gets out of the car and shuts his door. If he doesn’t, then he’ll end up in the backseat steaming up the windows instead of down in the unfinished basements of one of the partly built houses. Mikey really would rather they went inside so he climbs over the broken community gate and turns around to watch the guy follow him. He’s not Mikey’s usual type, western shirt and trimmed nails. But the gas station clerk had responded with Honky-Tonk when Mikey had asked him to give him a random genre of music when he stopped for gas earlier. And there’s no way in hell he was going to pick someone up in a cowboy hat and brown boots. Just no. It just meant he had to get creative.

Nights like these, Mikey doesn’t get to get laid. The teenager in him screams at the idea of passing up sex, especially when Honky Tonk’s hand lands on his ass. Fuck he’s got big hands, he could probably pin him down, manhandle him in a way that he usually can’t convince Gerard to. But the nameless need in him screams far louder. It dies down to a slightest hum sometimes, but it’s been four weeks since Gerard called him out after getting home, and it’s so loud in his veins he sometimes wonders how strangers can’t hear it bellowing out of his pores. He needs blood more than he needs an orgasm.

Honky-Tonk presses him against the unfinished drywall and Mikey snakes one arm around the guy’s waist and starts trailing fingers under his shirt. His other hand slides into his tight front jeans pocket and pulls out a pocket knife. It’s not the best of his tools but it’ll do for now. Also it’s easy to keep around, when the rest of his supplies are still in the trunk.

He lets Honky-Tonk kiss him and it’s good but not good enough. The snick of the blade is loud in the air to him but the other guy doesn’t seem to notice, too caught up in the haze of lust to really hear anything. With his other hand, Mikey mentally counts the spaces between the guy’s vertebrae and when he finds what he’s looking for he moves his other arm around the guy’s waist. 

The cut has to be precise or he’ll nick a kidney if he goes too wide or too deep. And that would be a waste. Severing the spinal cord isn’t easy though. You have to know where the cartilage is. Chipping bone is a buzz kill and also means he’ll lose the mask of surprise he’s working with now. The good thing is that his knife is fucking sharp as hell and it slides in quick and fast. 

Honky-Tonk’s arms are around his shoulders and the guy’s weight bears down on him the moment his legs are taken from him. Mikey takes the added weight willingly and slowly drops them both to the ground after reversing their positions. He doesn’t have to worry about screams because there’s no one around for at least several miles. Not that Honky-Tonk is screaming yet. He’s going to be slightly shocky, which is fine because it gives Mikey time to go to the car and get his supplies.

The screaming is always beautiful to his ears, just as good as any Misfits song. Music, sex, death, they all scratch different itches for him, and this one’s come up on the docket. Sometimes he just wants them to scream forever, wants to prolong this and never go home, like if he doesn’t notice that the sun is beginning to rise it won’t be. But home has Gerard, and even the burliest of guys or the curviest of girls runs out of skin eventually. 

What isn’t as wondrous is the pleading. He gets so fucking sick of the inevitable pleading, the ‘I won’t tell anyone I promise’, and ‘why are you doing this’. ‘You’re hurting me’ is an especially brilliant phrase. Mikey laughed the first dozen times, now he just rolls his eyes. No shit, Sherlock, that’s sort of the point. Sometimes he thinks if someone actually said something interesting he’d let them go in reward. If someone begged him to let them go because they had trig homework, maybe he would let them go finish it. If someone screamed ‘purple monkey dishwasher’ instead of ‘noooo’, he’d drive them to the hospital himself.

But Honky-Tonk isn’t really saying anything he hasn’t heard a million times so he tunes it out and sets his small black knife case down on the ground, far enough away that it won’t be sitting in a pool of blood by the end of everything while still being close enough that he can reach for it. The first knife he pulls out is a standard issue hunting knife. It can be bought just about everywhere. It’s sharp enough to cut through a Mountain Dew can in one slice. He doesn’t see the point of having a knife if it’s dull, even if a dull knife is supposed to be more painful. Mikey’s not here for the pain. He’s more into the bleeding away of that itch under his skin that seems to get worse and worse until he starts carving perfect lines into other people’s flesh and watching them slowly bleed out. 

He thinks about it for a minutes before using the knife to cut a pretty line across Honky-Tonk’s left shoulder. Brilliant spots of vibrant red immediately begin to soak into the hideous fabric of Honky-Tonk’s shirt and Mikey moves back to watch. There’s no way he’s going to pass this up. 

After about seven more shallow cuts, Mikey switches to the fillet knife he carries in his case. It’s not entirely practical but god is it sharp. If he wanted to he could peel Honky-Tonk’s skin from his muscles and the bone. Filleting knives are also a tool he finds especially handy if he wants to stab but not cause too much damage. His folding stiletto, while thin enough, isn’t the right heft and length to make the act of stabbing just the right side of perfection for him. Honky-Tonk screams high and shrill when the blade slides into the flesh near his right shoulder. Mikey stops and just listens. This is exactly why he chose the fillet knife.

The blood that’s flowing over the side of his knives from time to time is making his hands slick and he has to wipe his hands, and his knives, on his pants and his shirt so he doesn’t mess up a cut. Honky-Tonk is beginning to be slightly sluggish though, so he puts away the fillet knife and pulls out his old talon. It’s a pocket knife version but damn is it still a wonder and joy to see in action. The blade is curved in such a crescent shape that it makes carving circlets into someone’s arms ever so much fun. 

Honky-Tonk’s too weak to fight him off when he crouches closer again and gingerly lifts the guy’s right arm with his left hand. Slowly, ever so slowly, Mikey lets the edge of the blade bite into the curve of the skin, the crescent shape of the blade making the fit something of beauty. He doesn’t bother with serrated edged knifes because he doesn’t want jagged cuts. It’s why his talon is a smooth bladed thing of wonder instead of a wicked frightening thing of contempt.

It doesn’t take long for him to make a long spiraling cut down Honky-Tonk’s arm and Mikey pauses again to watch blood seep from the effortless lines of parted flesh. He does the same with Honky-Tonk’s right arm before standing up and backing away slightly. Honky-Tonk’s lost a lot of blood by now.

He’s not screaming anymore. Well, except for the actual uncontrolled screams with the knife slides like butter yet again. But he’s not screaming in hopes that someone is going to hear and rescue him. He’s just sobbing, flailing his head because it’s the only thing he’s got left. And then he seems to compose himself a bit, and looks straight at Mikey. And Mikey looks back, because hey, why not?

“Please don’t. I have a wife, a brother. Please,” he begs. Mikey doesn’t really consider himself the morality police. He knows there are some people out there that do this to take out the people that don’t think like them. That’s not his game. He hasn’t asked Gerard what his was, but he doubts that was Gerard’s either. Still, it sort of makes Mikey want to stab Honky-Tonk in the eye, that he decided to hook up with him while he has a wife. Cheating is not cool, he’d never do that shit to Gee. 

He doesn’t have time to stab him in the eye and watch the vitreous humour leak out before a second emotion hits him. It doesn’t feel right, it’s fucking up his playing. But Mikey can’t stop thinking that this guy isn’t going to see his brother again, and if he gets caught he’s not going to see Gee again. Death row inmates don’t get visitors, except for maybe on a phone behind a pane of glass, and that isn’t anywhere near good enough. He could handle the prison rape and the food that will eventually make his teeth fall out from lack of nutrition, and the shanking. He can’t handle not pressing close to Gerard, skin on skin.

It doesn’t mean he’s not going to finish this one. That would be a near guarantee of getting caught; letting Honky-Tonk live to tell everyone what bar he came from, who he got picked up by. All it takes is a bartender with a sharp memory and he’s screwed.

***

Gerard wakes to Mikey elbowing him half a dozen times. His first coherent thought is _oh god, how is it time for work already, it feels like I went to bed fifteen minutes ago_ , which artfully comes out as “Meergh.”

“Wake the hell up, I want to talk to you. I’ll start doing pink-belly if you don’t open your eyes in ten seconds.”

The hell of having your little brother as your lover means you know for a fact that they will indeed start slapping the shit out of your stomach if you don’t wake up when they want to talk. Gerard’s lost some weight since high school, and it’s hard to be self-conscious when you have someone that loves you unconditionally, but that doesn’t mean he wants his moderately flat stomach hit five hundred times. He opens his eyes. If the digital clock is still plugged in and reading the right time, it’s _not_ time for work, and he’s only been in bed half an hour.

“It’s five motherfucking thirty, Mikey.”

“Yeah, well, you’re closing so you don’t have to worry about it.”

“It’s still five thirty.” Whether or not he has time to go back to sleep has nothing to do with why in god’s name Mikey’s woken him up so unbearably early. 

“I just got in from-”

Gerard cuts him off. “Yeah, I know.” He’s not stupid, he knows Mikey’s signs. As soon as he started killing himself he recognised it in Mikey. Him asking him for a victim profile didn’t exactly conceal it well. Mikey didn’t ask him today, but he saw it in every move he made.

“I think you were right.”

If he wasn’t already waking up, Gerard would be wide awake now. It’s not often that he gets told he’s right about anything, even if he is more than half of the time. He sits up a little in bed.

“About what?”

Gerard’s pretty sure he knows exactly what Mikey’s talking about. He just needs to be positive. There’s no way he wants to mistake his brother finally being ready to quit killing with him agreeing that Gerard should shade in hues of yellow and orange into his newest sketch. 

“All the mysteries of the universe. What do you think? Maybe, maybe I want to stop.”

“Did you finish-” he can’t quite finish the sentence. He doesn’t know what he wants, he doesn’t want to hear Mikey saying he cut the person’s head off, or whatever it is he does that makes his jeans so bloody. But if Mikey says no, if Mikey started something and didn’t finish then he’ll have no choice but to voluntarily jump off the wagon he’s been on for eight months. Killing isn’t sketching or watching a movie, you can’t just leave the end of it for another time.

“No, because I’m that stupid. Jesus, Gee. The whole point is I don’t want to get caught.”

“So, it’s not because-” he cuts off. S K Anon has taught him the reason you quit doesn’t matter, it’s staying sober that does.

Mikey can read his mind though, which isn’t all that surprising. “What, because of remorse? Do I look like a prisoner up for parole? Do I have a list of times I volunteered to push the book cart around? I. Don’t. Want to get caught. Sorry if there’s supposed to be more.”

Gerard rolls off his side until his face is pressed into the soap smelling chest of his brother. He shakes his head, nose crunching lightly. “It’s enough.” 

“I fucking love the shit out of you, Gee.” Mikey doesn’t have to say it, he knows he does. Gerard knew when he decided to quit killing for him, knew when he helped get him through alcohol detox, knew when he moved to California with him and got a job instead of going to university. Gerard knows every fucking minute of every fucking day that Mikey loves him. But he never gets sick of hearing it. 

He shimmies up the bed and presses his lips hard against Mikey’s. Mikey parts them like it’s nothing, and it is and it isn’t at the same time, and maybe he’s a bit loopy from joy and from being woken up at the wrong part of a REM cycle, but his hand is on Mikey’s cock, playing with it until it gets hard -doesn’t really take long- and who could fault him for gasping into Mikey’s mouth and grinding against his hip?

There’s nothing really rushed about it. They end up staying in position and kissing instead of making good use of their bed. Gerard’s not going to complain because any orgasm is a good orgasm, especially right now. He’s possibly too giddy on too little sleep and Mikey wanting to quit killing for anything to matter much at the moment.

After they come, Gerard wipes his hand on one of their sheets before dragging a portion of the black fabric upward so he can clean Mikey off as well. It’s not that he minds come per say, but it tends to get flaky and Gerard doesn’t like the itchy feeling when he’s trying to sleep. Any other time and he’d be ok with it. As soon as he’s finished, he scoots over some and Mikey crawls into bed next to him. Once they’re curled up close together sleep creeps in quickly.

***

Brendon’s sitting near the back of the metro bus. It’s not a sunny day but it’s also not an extremely cloudy day either. His messenger bag is riding along next to him. He has it placed in the seat nearest the walkway. It’s not that he doesn’t want to talk to anyone exactly, it’s just… okay, maybe he doesn’t want to talk to anyone right now.

Luckily the bus he’s on right now isn’t very packed for the day it is. It’s not even two, so he won’t have to worry for about an hour or so before the city transit to starts becoming packed, and he’ll probably end up taking a late bus back to his apartment so he should be good. He has all the schedules memorized, especially the Saturday routes, since it’s the one day he’s able to get out and just wander around. Since Clarissa started dropping by on Saturdays to learn from Ryan, Brendon hasn’t had to come into the store to close up. After over two years of working seven days a week, it’s nice to have one day to just exist. Occasionally he’ll dress up and go out., but usually he’ll just leave his apartment and explore.

Back when Jon and he were dating they would find interesting abandoned places and take pictures. Brendon got used to it, not to mention the fact that Ryan thought it was interesting and latched onto the idea like a leech scouting for blood. But to continue taking pictures he had needed to get a new camera. When the mall didn’t have something in his price range he had ended up traipsing around the local flea market for something decent but not so new that he’d be afraid of breaking it. The camera’s a Fuji and it’s fully digital; it doesn’t have the best pixel quality ever but neither does it have the worst. Thirty-five millimeter disposable cameras aren’t reliable with their funky flashes and with a digital camera it’s easy to see and delete a picture if you don’t like it. The Fuji suits his needs.

In the three weeks since he found it on his day off, he’s been carrying it around with him. In a padded case, of course, he takes care of his belongings. But he _never_ would have thought to take Jon’s and cart it around with him. Jon’s camera was over a thousand dollars, and it was _his_. Brendon’s not quite sure whether it’s the comparative inexpense, or that this is his that lets him feel comfortable taking it around like it’s an iPod or a cell phone. Having it with him at all times makes it possible to get off the bus five blocks early and take pictures of the things on the way to his apartment block. Not only does it give Ryan more to work with, it latens the time that he arrives at his apartment, clean and silent and empty. 

When he was with Jon he would email Ryan a few pictures a night, not wanting to overwhelm him. It’s a frightening thing, to see Ryan in a flurry of inspiration. Brendon only made the mistake of sending him a whole zipped file of everything they’d taken once. Ryan called him seventeen times to ask opinions, and when Jon finally turned Brendon’s phone off so they could have sex he turned it back on the next morning to forty seven missed messages. Now that he’s taking more and some of the subject matter gets repetitive, it’s easier to print off the more compelling ones at Kinko’s. It’s only two stores down their tiny strip-mall, and since he does the books he can make the print offs a store expense. Plus that way he gets to bring them into work and show Ryan instead of waiting for a phone call or an email back. It’s been almost three years since he followed Ryan to California to make Ryan’s dream work, and he still gets a frisson of joy when he does something that makes Ryan get that hazy look in his eyes. Joy’s been a bit scarce lately, so Brendon knows to take it where he can get it. 

While he doesn’t love one over the other, there is a huge difference between getting off the bus early and going urban exploring. Being surrounded with rusted metal and grime and puddles of stained water has a different feel to it than children running through a water sprinkler shaped like an octopus. Mind you, the reverse appliqued octopus jeans did make Ryan just under five hundred dollars, and the shirt of hand beaded grime only thirty. He doesn’t think of potential revenue when he’s taking photos though, and neither does Ryan when he’s creating something. Price comes last, and it’s possibly not the best strategy from a business viewpoint, but it’s the only one that will make The Weather Today continue to work.

Brendon only has the time for exploring when he’s got his Saturday off. Sometimes he buses until he spots a place that looks good and gets off. Usually though he asks for opinions on the Urban Exploration Resource Forum. It’s third in his most visited websites, only below Google and Youtube. One of the recommendations is an abandoned elementary school, and even as Brendon is climbing onto the bus he’s already got mental visions of blackboards with chalk phrases still written, and how that might turn into floating yellow gauze sleeves for Ryan.

After his last transfer it takes him about a twenty-five minute walk to get to the school. There’s an old and rusted out chain link fence around the grounds, but it’s so disused that it’s listing in places and the dull grey links sag towards the ground to tangle with the overgrown weeds that are flourishing in the emptiness of mother nature reclaiming what’s hers. Brendon hops over a portion of the gate that’s been knocked down- it means he can use the part of the gate that’s still standing as leverage, because lord knows if he tried to climb over the drooping portions of the fence itself he’d no doubt tangle one of his feet in the linkage- and tries to steer around any murky puddles. He likes his pair of ratty faded yellow Converse. It would suck if he had to chuck them.

The school isn’t as big as his elementary school was, but it’s not tiny like those pictures in the books about the single room school houses either. Off to the side is a playground, at least what’s left of an old playground. The slide is rusted solid and the struts are twisted all out of shape, like time and too many applications of wind, rain, and sun have done their best to conquer it. It’s still standing though so Brendon gets close enough to angle a good shot and snaps several. 

Not far from the slide is a giant swing set. None of the seats are left, either stolen or blown away during a storm. One set of chains is wrapped around the side of one of the support poles and woven in between a lot of the links are sprigs of wilted vines, a tiny gloss of bright green spots through the brown of death. He takes a couple more photos.

After that, Brendon walks around the abandoned parking lot in the back, snapping a shot here or there of a turned over trash can or of a rotting picnic table. The words _Hope is an island in the ocean of emotion_ are scrawled across the top of the table in small blocky script. It makes for an interesting picture.

It doesn’t take him long to find a busted out window, the glass long since vanished from it’s once proud home. He places his hands carefully and climbs through. He rummages in his bag for his flashlight, just to be safe, and starts to look around. It’s obvious that this room has been used by a handful of stupid teenagers, the half crushed beer cans and cigarette butts provide a great counter to the mural that’s been ripped off the wall and left to rot on the floor. God only knows how it hasn’t been waterlogged or lit on fire from a still smoldering butt, but Brendon doesn’t care about how, just that it looks good from behind the eyepiece. Ryan might not be able to use it, but Ryan is for tomorrow morning, tonight is for him.

***

Mikey’s heard in the same way that you hear about Pepsi and Pop Rox killing someone, or chihuahuas actually being giant Mexican rats, that twins separated at birth end up having nearly identical lives. He’s never actually met a set of twins to ask them if it’s true or if it’s bullshit, and he’s not sure he’d be the giant tool that asks a twin a question about being a twin if he ever met a set. But he does wonder if it’s true. Sometimes he feels like he’s that close to Gerard, and lately it seems like the same thing is happening to him. They’ve always been impossibly close. It’s why they had to move away from Jersey, so they didn’t have to lie about it and keep a careful facade. They like the same movies and music, are fascinated by the same foreign cultures. Then Gerard dropped the bomb that he killed people too. That’s nothing compared to this instance though.

It’s Thursday evening, and apparently that’s Serial Killers Anonymous night. Mikey’s itch isn’t really back yet, it’s only been six days since he took Honky Tonk out. But Gerard insists that this will help, he’s as grateful for it as he is for Alcoholics’ Anon. Mikey trusts him to know what he’s talking about, king of addictive behaviours, and Gerard knows that’s not a barb when he says it out loud.

If they’re both in the same car usually it’s Gerard that’s driving. He’s got a shit-ton more road rage, but it’s easier to be a passenger and listening to Gerard rant about all the assholes around him than it is to be the driver and listen to Gerard tell him run this light, use this side street. Mikey leans low into the seat, feet perpendicular with his head on the dashboard and texts Clyde from work. It isn’t till a familiar stretch of road begins to blur outside the passenger side window that he takes notice of anything. And when he does, it takes every bit of slouching possible to keep himself from pressing his face to the glass. Gerard’s driving them to the abandoned subdivision he likes to frequent. It’s just another way they’re the same.

Mikey does his best not to get distracted when Gee parks their car near three others and gets out. When they climb the gate he wants to just go around and check up on all of the houses, see if there are still puddles of brown flaking in places. Instead he follows Gerard, who heads toward the tiny community building. Leave it to rich gated community people to think their neighbours would want to converse with each other. Gee pauses for a moment and just sort of stares at the side of the building, like he’s expecting it to do something interesting. When nothing happens, he climbs the crooked steps and pushes open the door. Mikey looks at the side of the building and can’t find any reason for it to be important so he climbs up the stairs after his brother.

There are five people sitting on surprisingly clean looking lawn chairs, all the oranges and blues and lime in a half decent circle. Gerard sinks into one with a sunburst on it, and Mikey has no choice but to fill one of the two left vacant. Gerard starts the meeting, which Mikey guesses makes sense, since he’s done this shit before. “Hey guys. I brought my boyfriend.”

“Dude, you can’t just-” a tall one wearing a necklace of Justin Timberlake starts.

“He’s trying to quit too, it’s not like I just brought him randomly. I’m not a fucking moron.”

“Living with someone still addicted is a bad idea Gee. How long has he had the habit?”

“Thanks William, but he started before I did, and he’s been doing it the whole time, and I haven’t started again, so-”

“So you’re saying Mikey influenced you to start killing?”

Mikey doesn’t know how the guy in the orange knows his name, doesn’t know any of these guys, but he’s not going to do this bullshit. He’s pretty sure this isn’t supposed to be about blaming. “I didn’t influence anything. I didn’t even know he was playing until two months ago, and after I found out I only killed one more time before I stopped. So, like, shut up.”

Bling Necklace speaks up again. “Right, so obviously we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. Imma do introductions so we can all be friends, good? I’m Gabe, I’m an ex-serial killer seven months now. I’m William’s buddy.”

“I’m William, I’m a ex-serial killer, it was six months but I slipped last month. I’ve quit again though, and it’s gonna stick this time.”

“I’m Cash, I’m an ex-serial killer. It’s been nine months. I quit for a few years after the first time, but I got weak for a bit. But then group started, and shit’s been real ever since.”

“I’m Ryland, I’m an ex-serial killer. It’s been five months, Cash’s my buddy.”

Gerard shrugs. “You already know I’m Gee. But we haven’t really talked about it, so you don’t know that it’s been nine months since I quit. Since Kevin slipped I haven’t had a buddy.”

Mikey swallows. He thinks about his knives for a second, the way he’s giving them up for Gerard and apparently this group of strangers. “I’m Mikey. I last killed on Friday. I don’t know that I’m an ex serial killer yet.”

Gabe shakes his head then shoots a grin at Mikey. “You are. The moment you walked in here you were an ex. You just need to hop on the program, get a buddy and a pledge pin and all that jazz.”

The dirty blond smiles. “I’ll take Hips, can show him allll the ways of the world.”

Mikey doesn’t miss the way that the others exchange looks before Gerard frowns. “Yeah, me and Mikey already live together, we’re gonna be buddies.”

“Okay, like, whatever. Greedyguts. I’m Kesha, I’m an ex-serial killer. I’ve been hungry for eight fuckin’ months. And Andy’s supposed to be my buddy, but yeah, like that’s gonna be real after today. Shit.”

“Where is Andy? I didn’t see his bike out front.”

“Shit, Waydog, don’t you watch the news?” Mikey can’t help but giggle as Gerard winces at the nickname. It figures that the white boy with the name of Cash is trying to be gangster. Although he’s not gonna say anything about wannabes until he finds out that Cash isn’t a redeemed gang member, just in case. “BP was doing deepwater drilling for oil. Shit broke and now there’s oil everywhere. The company claimed it was relatively tiny in comparison to a very large ocean. But they don’t know how many days it’s gonna take to contain it.”

“Crude oil is leaking into the ocean and a big name company is making excuses about it?”

“Yeah, a shit ton. Like some coast guard said three hundred and forty thousand gallons a day, and they don’t know when it’s gonna stop.”

William leans forward and explains things to Mikey, who’s feeling both pissed at the corporation and confused about why it matters. “Andy was in this eco terrorist group in university, blew up cars and stuff. Only he thought it was better when the offenders blew up too. People fucking up the environment is a trigger. I knew he wouldn’t be here tonight as soon as I flipped past CNN.”

“So, what? You’re just gonna let him start building bombs again?”

“Speaking as his buddy? Hell yeah. I guess you haven’t thought about it much, numminess, but a herd of people showing up at someone’s house the week before someone goes mental and starts bombing shit? Way suspicious. This aint AA, our habits are illegal, and you can only do so much to hold up another person before they squish you flat.”

Mikey wants to believe that Gerard would be different with him, but if Gerard has known for so long and hadn’t ever said anything, it’s pretty obvious he holds the same thoughts on personal responsibility. Which means that it’s good that he’s stopping now, before he forces Gerard to make a decision between them, and saving himself.

***

Gerard’s not happy that Andy’s not here, but it’s not like he can do anything about it. So he’s just going to sit here and listen to everyone discuss their week and support each other. Dwelling isn’t going to solve anything.

“The local trope’s been pretty active lately. We’re doing something dark and intense. I was afraid that it might be triggery but it’s really not.”

Ryland’s talking and Gerard relaxes in his seat some. It’s good to know that the acting thing Ryland and Cash are involved in is helping. 

“And then I was like ‘what’s the difference between a dead baby and a trampoline’, and everyone glared and I told them ‘when you jump on a trampoline you take your boots off’, and no one even laughed. I swear, every actor ‘cept Ryboy is a stuck up twat. But whatever, right? The play’s cool, who cares if the actors are jizzbags.”

Mikey speaks up and Gerard stops himself from twisting sideways in his chair to look at him. Smothering him would be detrimental as hell at this point. “So, you do, like-”

“What? Kill babies? What the fuck kind of asshole you think I am? Jesus H, dude.”

“You’re talking about dead babies at a meeting of serial killers.”

“Because it’s funny, man. It’s a fucking _joke_. You wanna hear my black people jokes?”

“Fuck no!” Gabe answers for the group. Gerard’s glad for that, and for his restraint. If any intra-group violence would happen it would be between Gabe and Cash.

“Cash almost got us suspended from the group for the joke, but I think they’re used to it by now. No, the play’s about this dude who writes really morbid stories about dead children because his parents used to abuse his brother. So back in the day the dude killed his parents and started taking care of his brother, but then the brother starts killing kids in the same way the stories illustrate. So I thought, hey maybe this is going to suck. But turns out, not so much.”

Gerard nods at that, though now he wants to know more about this play because while depressing as hell, it sounds interesting. 

“I mean it’s been about a week since I’ve woken up from an especially sweet dream about cracking someone’s ribs open and snipping out their heart. I was maybe expecting an amateur community production of a story about brutal killings to make that drive start up again, but it’s not. I’m still having the dreams though. End up having to watch TV Land for an hour before I can pass out again.”

“Yeah, dreams can suck. Sometimes I dream that I’m burning the entire world to the ground. It’s kind of funny though, in my dreams the trees never burn, or grass or flowers. It’s like dream me is expecting dream Andy to come and kick my ass.” 

“You call Cash, tell him to get his ass over? Shit, me and Bilvy almost live together for how often we hang out early morning.”

“Yeah, of course I want Cash to drive to my house in the middle of the night.”

“Okay, A, fuck you, I’m your fucking buddy, you better call me, you shitter. B, I’m not gonna slip. C, it’s not like there’s even any pedestrians at three in the morning, you live in suburbia. There’s not even any house parties.” At Ryland’s unasked question he adds “sometimes when I can’t sleep I drive around your block a few dozen times. It’s better than waking up my parents with Grand Theft.”

Kesha snorts. “You’re like, such a silly little boy. Why do you even own that game?”

“I dunno, why do you whore around?”

“Okay! So, if Andy’s not coming back, then we need to shift around buddies a bit.” Yeah, it’s a change of topic, but it’s true nonetheless. “Anyone feeling confident enough to give up a partner?”

“Me and Bill can take care of her. Twice the distraction, plus we’re quick fuckers, take that phrase as you will.”

“Sure you don’t want a go, Hips? You’re so pale, I bet you’d freckle under heat.” 

Mikey opens his mouth and Gerard talks loudly over him. “So me and Mikes, Ryland and Cash like normal, and William, Gabe, and Kesha. Great.” He doesn’t care if Mikey thinks he’s being a cockblocker, he’ll explain it later. Mikey’s clumsy, all it takes is one trip on a discarded bra and he’s down like every horror movie starlet ever. Kesha won’t slit his achilles, she’ll just gnaw a chunk out of his heel, ignoring the kicks. It’s not like she hasn’t been kicked before. 

It’s about a half hour more of talking before things start to wrap up. Gerard’s AA meetings tend to last longer, but the group in front him aren’t particularly known for patience. He stays back a minute to encourage Mikey to talk to Gabe about a show he’s DJ’ing. Gerard isn’t much for techno but Mikey likes it, and it can only help to get Mikey to associate clubs with more than hooking up or picking victims. As they head out of the community centre into the parking lot, Kesha and William are fucking in the back seat of her gold Trans Am. It’s not particularly a surprise, Gerard just wishes William the speed of the gods. Everyone in SK Anon knows she get hungry when she gets turned on.

***

It takes Brendon way too many weeks to realize that he can do something about his loneliness. Long enough that Ryan would laugh at him, if Ryan wasn’t certain the only way for Brendon to lead the rest of his life was become a fashion oriented monk. But Brendon’s not looking to become a clone of Ryan -no one in the _world_ wants another Ryan- so he does what any other gay man in his twenties would do. He creates a profile on plentyoffish and looks for a date.

After rejecting several emails and date offers, somehow he finds himself at Denny’s around nine o’ clock with a guy named Harvey . Harvey’s very average looking, but he has a sense of humour and Brendon likes to smile. So it’s a win-win situation. Even if Harvey is older than him by about six years, it’s not like he’s got a limit on age when he dates someone. He usually ends up dating older guys anyways, much to Ryan’s distaste.

The place isn’t packed. There’s a trucker sitting on a stool near the kitchen area, and groups of people who range from one table of twenty something girls discussing something college related, to two tables of travel weary families. Brendon’s being a bit too loud when he laughs, but it’s been awhile since he’s been on a date and he can be a bit of a dork from time to time when he’s nervous or thinking too hard.

Their waitress brings them their food and Harvey picks at his fries while Brendon happily snags three from his own plate. He’s maybe a bit disappointed that Harvey isn’t much on cuddling in booths even though he was the one who insisted they sit side by side instead of opposite each other. Brendon’s a huge fan of cuddles and hugs. Sure he’s also a fan of sex and everything physical, but cuddles and hugs are love and his profile was very clear on the subject. Even if he will deny it until the day he dies if Ryan finds out that he bolded that statement in the _info about me_ section of his profile. 

They don’t really talk while they’re eating and Brendon’s starting to suspect that what he thought was a good idea is beginning to implode on him. He almost chokes on a sip of his water when a warm weight creeps into his lap. Harvey has decently sized hands and Brendon shouldn’t be thinking about that because he’ll just make himself horny and he’s in public.

The sound of his zipper being pulled down is loud in his ears. He should say no to this, and not just because he’s in public. He just met Harvey and while Brendon might not be the hardest to tumble into bed he’s also usually not this easy either. The problem lies in the fact that he’s trapped in the inside portion of the booth and it’s been way too long since he’s had someone else touch him. One day maybe he’ll be used to not being in some form of a relationship for longer than a month. Right now though, he’s not and Harvey knows what he’s doing.

Harvey isn’t saying anything at all, he just continues to pick at his fries with his left hand while his right keeps stroking Brendon’s cock at a steady pace that’s maddening. It doesn’t take long for him to come and Harvey drops his napkin into his own lap before transferring it over and cleaning them both up. He crumples it up and sets it on the table like nothing’s happened.

Brendon stares at the napkin and wonders why no one even turned a head in their direction because it has to be blatantly obvious what just happened. Yet everyone continues on the way they were not even minutes before, the stale smell of grease and coffee making the air too full to carry another scent. Diana Ross and the Supremes are singing _’You can’t hurry love’_ and Brendon does his best to tuck himself back into his jeans. He’s sure his face is red and even after coming he’s tenser than he was before.

Guilt stalks up on him and he feels cornered. His fries no longer hold any appeal and he just wants out of the booth but Harvey’s blocking his way. A half hysterical giggle bursts out of his mouth as he remembers in sixth grade the gym teacher giving them a very awkward talk then giving all the girls rape whistles. The boys didn’t get them, of course. Brendon imagines blowing one and having all the waitresses running with help. But there’s no shitty dollar store whistle on the table, just food going cold, condiments pressed against a laminated sign advertising dessert options, and his cutlery. He briefly imagines stabbing Harvey in the eye. Messy, but it would get his point across.

“You gonna return the favour then?” Harvey mutters after a minute of silence, thigh nudging Brendon’s.

“Get up.”

“What?”

“Get the fuck up. I’m going home. Now. This was not what I. You didn’t even give me a-”

“What, a hug? Yeah, and I’m supposed to think you actually like puppies and taking pictures of sunsets?” Harvey looks at him for a second then snorts, Brendon sets his jaw and refuses to blush. “Oh shit, you do. Branden, it’s fuckin’ Denny’s, you can’t snuggle in a Denny’s.”

“Move over or I’ll-”

“Scream? Yeah, whatever. For the sake of your future hook ups? Warn them you’re a cocktease before you sit down to eat. Seriously, what a waste of time. If I wanted pancakes and a jerk off session I could have stayed at home.” He stands though, and Brendon is able to scoot out and toss down ten bucks for his meal, so he doesn’t care what he says. All that matters is that he gets home. Tomorrow is another day, and for all he knows some pretty, _nice_ boy will come into The Weather Today and Brendon will have someone to fall in love with.

***

Mikey pointedly doesn’t check his cell phone as the next band starts setting up their shit. Gerard’s going to be in the parking lot beside the park at quarter to six, probably still in his work uniform. Mikey’s had the day off, and thus he won’t be wearing a matching outfit of black pants and a logoed polo shirt. Before Gee dropped him off this morning he made him promise to be waiting. According to Gerard SK Anon doesn’t have a set in stone opening time, but if they’re not there by six thirty at latest the others will assume they’re not coming.

If it was up to Mikey, he probably wouldn’t. It’s not like he’s trying to reject the help, if they have tips to make his itch not come back he’s all for hearing it. It’s just today is a bad day for having a chunk stolen from his evening. He’s been in the park since nine this morning, the first band started playing at ten, the earliest that the zoning laws about sound would let them. There are bands scheduled until ten at night, and there will probably be a sweet ass afterparty too. 

There’s no doubt that the newspaper will write it from a nu!Woodstock perspective. Mikey can see parts of it that would be valid. There are some people wandering around in too much yellow with their shoes tied together and hanging around their necks. He’s pretty sure he saw a guy in a tie-dyed shirt give the woman he was with a tiny, thin square of paper. Not to mention that some of the acts have a very experimental and reinventing rock sound to them. One group had a three minute bongo solo before sliding into a killer electric guitar shred.

On the other hand, there are also huge differences from how the Youtube vids make the original Woodstock look. No one’s really flashing anyone, though some of the gothier girls are wearing pretty low cut shirts. The ground isn’t sopping wet from too much rain, his sky blue converse with dark blue Tardises painted on them will survive just fine. And while there’s been some pretty sweet solos, so far there hasn’t been a guitarist ballsy enough to try what Hendrix did and start wailing out _The Star Spangled Banner_. Not to mention that bands at Woodstock didn’t have names like FistFugger, or I Don’t Care, Let’s Just Fight, or Nrggh.

Essentially it’s the perfect mix of classic rock traditions and everything that makes the updated scene a good place to be. And rather than continue to elbow and get close enough to the speakers that his ears ring tomorrow Gerard is picking him up in something like half an hour. If he doesn’t show Gee will have a fucking fit, Mikey’s known him long enough to know that.

Last time he didn’t say much. He just listened to Ryland and Cash talk about their play, and watched Kesha stare at him, licking her lips. He’d returned the attention for most of the hour, and then they left the abandoned building to see her screwing William. Mikey has nothing against people with high sex drives, it would be pretty damn hypocritical if he did, but for the most part he doesn’t like his seconds that sloppy.

This time he’s going to have to talk. About his creativity with working within boundaries, about the slices and the bubbling blood, about all his majestic knives that he’ll never get to use again. He suspects he’s going to get the same trigger lecture that Cash got about playing Grand Theft Auto. While it pains him to know he’s going to be compared to someone that irritating and assholish, Mikey’s gonna say the same thing Cash did about the group trying to talk him away from his XBox- a hearty fuck off. His knives are a part of him, his beauties, there’s nothing anyone could say to make him consider throwing them away. He might have to store them away in the dusty guest room, toolkit snug under the bed, but he’ll never get rid of them.

***

Gerard rushed into the back of the store, swearing at his swipe card as it wasn’t working fast enough. He didn’t bother to go to the bathroom because it was in the opposite direction of the lot his car was parked in, which meant he was still in work trousers and a shirt with a button and a collar when he left the mall. He didn’t stop and grab a coffee or fries or a slushie from the food court. Shit, he didn’t even hold the door open for the person leaving the same exit as him, in too much of a rush for that.

None of it mattered though, because he’s been sitting in the parking lot for ten minutes, waiting for Mikey’s stupid ass to get in the car. In that ten minutes he’s had not one but _three_ teenagers ask him if he’s got any weed, and one transvestite ask him if he’s looking for a good time. There’s a shirt in the back seat, after a few minutes of sitting he stretches backwards and grabs it. He’s pretty sure it was meant to be for wiping grime off the windshield, but it’s still more black than grey-brown, so he shucks off his uniform shirt and pulls it on. The logo is too faded to see what he was originally advertising, but it has to be better than Borders. And it doesn’t have a fucking collar. Gerard hates collars. They’re itchy.

Mikey finally climbs into the car, torn blades of grass all over his shoes and ripped rims of his jeans. Gerard can tell from the way he slumps in the seat, the way the loudest noise in the car is his seat belt locking into place, that he’s pissed. Mikey gets so petulant when he’s pissed, silent and curled in on himself, it would be funny if it wasn’t annoying as fuck. At least when Gerard used to get mad he was a fucking man about it, doing what-

Okay. No. Gerard takes a deep breath and turns the key in the ignition. Killing people when the petty irritants built too high too fast without the liquor to melt it all away didn’t make him a man. That’s what this is about, that’s why he bolted from work so they wouldn’t start the meeting without them. Falling into the same thought cycles won’t help anything.

Driving is soothing and Gerard tries to get lost in the motions of his hands on the wheel, minute variations in their movement flowing under his curled fingers. Mikey’s silent in the passenger seat and that helps some. But at the same time it only makes things worse because he’s used to Mikey making random assumptions or pointing things out while typing out text messages. Instead, Gerard’s having to deal with his younger brother giving him the silent treatment because he’s been adamant that they don’t miss the meeting.

His hands tighten around the wheel and Gerard has to keep his thoughts from trying to drift off to a very unhelpful area of his brain. He doesn’t need to be thinking about how killing felt. He doesn’t need this right now, and it’s also another reason they need to show up this week. If he can’t even focus on driving without daydreaming about strangulation then he sure as hell needs group this week.

Suddenly the car in front of them presses on their brake, the red lights going solid on the back of their vehicle, and Gerard has to slam on the brake as well so they don’t ram into the other car’s back end. It’s possible he hasn’t been paying as much attention to the road in front of him as he should have been, because there’s the sound of sirens several cars in front of them and how the hell did he miss hearing them? 

Minutes start to tick away, the lines of the digital numbers on the dash folding into and snapping out of each other. God knows how long it’s going to take for a tow truck to make the fucking car _move_ , but each minute eats away at the possibility that they’re going to make it before Ryland or Gabe decides to wing it and start it themselves. Gerard considers turning the radio on, but if he can’t find the right song it’ll only make it worse. At this point it’s more about minimizing damage than anything else. 

The buzzing of his cell going off breaks the taut silence of the car. Gerard grits his teeth before picking it up. He can’t check who it is, can’t screen the call. If it’s work wanting to give him another shift or Mom he cannot be held accountable for what happens next. Except that’s the whole point, he _must_ be held accountable for everything he does. “What!”

“Hey Waydog. You comin’ tonight, or you pullin’ an Andy?” 

All the muscles in Gerard’s face twitch, and it takes a minute before he can open his mouth and reply. “We’re coming. You have no fucking idea how much I need to make this meeting. We’re stuck in traffic, some asshole crashed or I don’t even know but-”

“Sokay, Waydog. I’ll hold the troops until the captain arrives. Is that a mixed metaphor? Never really did the army thing, don’t think I’d like assholes in fancy suits with pins and shit telling me what to do. Dunno who’s for what. Get here when you get here, we’ll wait. It’s coo’.”

Gerard throws his phone into the tiny cubby under the cd player and turns to his brother. “This is all your fucking fault! If you’d just been in the motherfucking parking lot! Fifteen minutes would have had us way ahead of some dickbag that doesn’t know how to swerve properly-”

“Oh fuck off Gerard. You know I was busy today-”

“What, hanging out with a bunch of teenagers and watching people play?”

“Oh, like, I didn’t realise you were so fucking mature that you’re too good for music. Excuse me, Gee. Lemme just bow to your infinite wisdom-”

“Fuck you Mikey! I’m trying to help you!”

“Maybe I don’t need help like you do. Maybe I have self control.”

Things go grey for a second, and when they come back Gerard is standing on the highway, hand on the handle of the car beside him. The passenger doesn’t even notice, she’s got headphones pushed into her ears. Gerard’s fingers are twitching, he can already feel the way her throat would spasm, the way she would kick and hit for a minute and then get too weak to fight. It would be easier than with most, her being restrained in the seatbelt. The problem would be the driver, the other people in the other cars. But none of it matters right now, all that matters is the chain of her necklace that would eat into his palm.

“Gerard!” 

It breaks the angry fog. Not a lot, but enough to realise that if he kills now he’s not going to escape the scene. This could be the last moment of his life, if he lets it be. It’s his choice. He lets go the handle and climbs back into his seat. He slams the door and presses the button to make it lock, not that it would matter.

“Were you gonna-”

Gerard cuts him off. “We’re going to the meeting. We can go back to the park after it’s over.”

Mikey seems to soften. “Yeah Gee, okay. Okay.”

“We’re going to the meeting.”

***

It’s Thursday evening and Brendon’s watching the scenery pass by through his view from the window seat on the metro bus. His iPod’s playing _Run For the Hills_ and it’s such a clash with the atmosphere hanging about that Brendon looks up to scan the inside of the bus for anything different to focus on. They lurch to a stop and he grabs his messenger bag from its seat and gets up. It’s not his stop or even one for one of his transfers but it’ll be a change of pace so he’ll let the bus drop him off here.

There’s only so many times he can take pictures of the local children playing in the park near his apartment before they call the cops on him. Also he’d rather not have the Abbots who run one of the local grocers’ stores in the area to think he’s casing the place. Seriously, why would he want to steal bruised oranges and slightly wilted lettuce? But whatever. There’s a billion other things he can take pictures of. 

He starts walking in the opposite direction of the bus stop, taking pictures as he goes. If he’s not mistaken about where he currently is, there should be an abandoned subdivision around here somewhere if he’s been researching UERF correctly. Normally he doesn’t go urban exploring after work, but he’s in the area and, well, why not? He’s got an hour or so of good light before twilight sets in and he’s pretty sure there’s a night bus that picks up from where he got off so it’s not like he’ll be stranded. 

Eventually there’s the vague indention of tracks in the distance, cutting through some overgrown foliage and Brendon cuts through. It doesn’t take long for him to find several cars parked next to each other. He’s heard of several urban explorers planning group events, but he hasn’t ever gone to one. Most head out too early, when he’s still at work. He hops over the broken down gate and turns around to take several pictures, two from an angle and a third from straight on, before starting off to explore. Maybe he’ll bump into the other people. Even if they don’t have any tips, it’ll probably be interesting anyways. 

There are a group of people, but they aren’t doing anything. Well, they’re doing _something_ , it’s impossible for people to not actually do anything, everyone has to at least breathe and blink. But they’re not taking pictures. Instead they’re just sitting in a circle, talking. Brendon can’t help being curious -while vaguely wary that they’re a bunch of drug users who might want him to shoot up with them- so he goes and sits himself in the last empty lawn chair. Everyone looks at him. A few smile, the only girl has a huge grin, but no one interrupts the guy who’s talking to say hi. 

“But then after Johnson dropped me off I started getting jangly, you know? That fuckin feelin’ in your palms that says it’s time to grab a steering wheel. So I busted out of the house and walked a few blocks, then snatched up the one that sang. It didn’t look nothin’ special, just a blue Range Rover, but it fuckin’ sang. Once I got in the seat and started taking it around, the song just got louder, louder than I could play the radio. It was so fucking good, like my entire body was jerkin’ off. And I could just taste the bone shards on the bumper, ya know? But I clamped down on that shit, and called RyRy. He was a helpful fucker.”

“I told him to focus, and just run five red lights, and take pictures for proof.”

“He got me through it. I sent him the pictures, put the car in a safe place, and walked home. Thanks man.”

Brendon’s doing his best to not stare, because, he’s pretty much confused now. Who has urges to steal cars? But then maybe this is one of those live action role playing things he’s heard of. Not all of them have to be about elves and dwarves fighting to rule a kingdom, right? So what if these people are pretending to steal cars and stuff, he’s not going to harsh their good time just because he’s out of the loop. The last thing he’d want to do is break the scene and have them all mad at him. You can’t make friends if you piss them off first.

“Actually I’ve got a buddy system for the win story too.” The guy speaking is wearing a bright lime shirt. If Brendon was pretending to be a thief or a gangster he would wear fur. Lots and lots of fur. A lime green shirt and darker green and pink plaid surfing shorts aren’t very hardcore. 

“You know how sometimes you have a dream that you remember in tiny snatches, and it fades even though you try to remember it? Yeah, it wasn’t one of those. It was full fucking blown, three-d, hi-res, all the goodness technology can give us and more. This girl, right, she was on her hands and knees. Her purse was on the sidewalk, a real obvious Louis Vuitton knock off, and there was makeup and shit scattered everywhere. I think she probably tripped when she broke a heel, one was just dangling. And I walk up behind her and the dumb bitch doesn’t even see my shadow, too concerned that her square of eye shadow has broken up in the fall. And all of a sudden I’ve got this gorgeous crowbar in my hand. It was high end, definitely full steel, not titanium. Hit her with the flat, fissured edge first, went in easy like vampire bites to the back of the skull. After a few a those I turned it sideways and left C curves all over her.”

Okay, so apparently they are in a thug life kind of LARP? It’s the only thing Brendon can think of. So maybe this guy’s character doesn’t care if he looks badass, because he doesn’t leave the headquarters without a crowbar, and everyone knows not to mess with him?

“That’s when I woke up, dick about to fucking _burst_ , you know? But I figured that would be bad, what’s it, like operant conditioning? Tying a killing dream to getting off? So I went into the other room and woke William up, and had him tie me up and be a total cocktease for a bit, scratching and blowing on my dick and all that. By the time he let me come I wasn’t anywhere near thinking about killing some bitch.”

The girl smiles, tossing her wavy over-exposed blond hair behind her shoulder. “William’s been good about getting me off too. Like I was having sex with this guy the other day, and he ate me out and his face was all wet when he started to make out with me, and it was like a glazed ham. It just looked so-” she gestures emphatically, “ya’ know? I just wanted to slice off strips and cook it like bacon. God, it’s been like forever since I’ve had home made bacon.” Brendon tries to tell himself that she’s just a really good actress, but she’s _staring_ at him, and it’s starting to freak him out. She doesn’t sound like she’s acting. “But I didn’t. I kicked the hottie out before I took even a bite. I got dressed, and yeah I ran out the front door because I was just really, really hungry, you know? But the car was already gone. So I called William and he brought Jack Daniels and we fucked a few times. It’s all good ‘cause I think William would be stringy. Totally not worth all the trouble to strip him down and drain him.”

The one with long brown hair chuckles. “Thank, Kesh.”

A guy in a black shirt covered in grime -seriously, he looks homeless- sits up a bit, leaning towards Brendon. “Welcome to Serial Killers Anonymous. You look like you don’t really want to talk, and that’s okay. No one here is forced to. But if you’re planning on coming back, if you’re serious about quitting, it’ll be easier if you have a buddy. As you just heard, Gabe and Cash both needed help turning from temptation this week.”

Brendon feels like he’s on the verge of having a panic attack. These people don’t sound like they’re joking, like they’re acting parts. Grimy seems as earnest as Ryan gets when he starts a lecture on dyeing fabric being the most important artistic revelation he’s ever had. In Ryan’s case Brendon sighs and listens for the hundredth time. Brendon doesn’t know what to do in this case, except hyperventilate. 

The girl smiles. “I don’t have a partner!”

There’s not a chance Brendon is going near a girl that talks about eating people’s faces like bacon. On the other hand, he doesn’t know how to say no without making her angry. _Don’t piss off serial killers_ was never amongst the lessons his parents taught him, but he thinks it’s a common sense statement. 

Thankfully Plaid grins at her. “What, you don’t love us anymore Kesha?”

William adds “you don’t want our smoking hot bodies?”

Kesha twirls a lock of hair around her finger and says absently “I don’t like smoked meat. Makes it taste harsh.” She is staring at him. She is staring at him and _licking her lips_ , and Brendon can’t remember the last time he was this terrified. Even when he got kicked out of the house at sixteen, at least he wasn’t going to die horribly.

Thankfully the others in the group are all exchanging glances, and they seem to realise that he is shit scared. William gets out of his chair and climbs into hers, straddling her. Grimy says “Me and Mikey are together all the time anyway, it’s almost like not having a buddy. It’ll be easier for us to take him. If that’s cool with you guys?”

Car stealer -and it just hits Brendon that he said _bone shards_ when he was talking- says go for it, and the other one shrugs. Brendon just closes his eyes. If he can get out of here alive he’ll never Urban Explore in places that have other people again.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s one pm and Mikey doesn’t want to be at work. They have him drifting from stocking shelves, helping customers, running a register, and whatever various sundry things they can shove at him. He may be full time, but they still treat him like he’s their coverage bitch. His schedule is never the same and Earl, the general store manager, hadn’t been happy when he said he needed Thursday nights off. It’s not like they’re understaffed, and the college students who continually cycle through as part-time night shiftees can take his Thursday nights if Earl is cruel enough to try and stick him with a Thursday night shift. If their manager can’t handle that he finally needs to actively ask off for a consistent day then oh well. It’s not like he’s asking off the whole day either. He’s begrudgingly willing to come in for the crack ass of dawn shift after working till closing the night before. If Earl can’t translate that to mean that Mikey plans on sticking around then he can go fuck himself. 

It’s possible, though, that he doesn’t want to go to tonight’s meeting. The last three people he’s checked out all make him want to drag them out to some place secluded so he can carve neat lines into their skin. He’d have to wait until after everyone left before he could go to the abandoned subdivision and play but it’s not like group occurs late at night anyways. But he’d be a douche if he showed up at group only to come back later to have some fun. Skipping might be the best option.

The new morning shift supervisor pulls him off of the register when one of the evening part-time cashiers comes up from clocking in in the back and Mikey’s back to stocking until there’s a partial magazine delivery. He might not have a supervisor’s position title, but they’ve still taught him how to check in the magazine deliveries if everyone else is busy. If only Earl would stop complaining that he can’t promise to keep his and Gee’s shifts separate then Mikey could actually snag a supervisor’s position instead of Earl having to hire someone new in every time the old day shift supervisor decides to quit.

At least checking in the magazines keeps him away from the public for about twenty minutes. After that he’s back on the sales floor and everyone he sees makes his skin itch with want. It’s a hideous feeling, like every muscle under the layer of skin is just squirming around. It’s made worse as a crippling guilt starts to creep along with it. Not about the people he wants to carve; if they’re stupid enough to go with him to an abandoned fucking gated community they get what they deserve. 

No, Mikey feels guilty because he’s always mentally scorned Gerard for his weakness. Before he quit for the final time -although Mikey knows now that he just switched from one addiction to another- he quit about a dozen times. It seemed like every few weeks Gerard would wake up in a pile of his own puke, vowing that he wasn’t going to drink again. They went through a lot of bath mats in the early days, before they got smart and just duct taped a towel to the bathroom linoleum so Mikey wouldn’t slip and bash his brains open. He might have made mental jokes about Gerard falling off and climbing back on the wagon so often that he should wear kneepads so it wouldn’t hurt so much. 

Being the addicted one now makes it all clearer. It’s easy as fuck to say you’re going to quit when you’re not actively interested in the thing you enjoy. As soon as the need comes back quitting suddenly makes a lot less sense. It’s too hard, it’s not worth it to stop. Not if he’s going to be spending the rest of his life feeling like there are snakes under his skin. 

He’s just got to figure out if he’s going to formally renounce quitting, or if he should try to sneak it past Gee. He probably could. If he stops killing in the middle of the night, if he just tells Gerard he has to work a shift, and then spends that time finding someone and slicing them he could probably get away with it. If he actually comes out and tells Gerard then chances are Vader-chokes-a-bitch high that there will be an _intervention_ , and it will be dramatic and awkward. Mikey’s found in his twenty one years most of the time it’s just easier to hide shit that will make Gerard upset. 

The problem is he thought he was hiding it well before, and apparently Gerard knew anyway. If he tries to hide this and Gerard finds out he’ll be butthurt to the highest degree. They’ve had a few issues in the past, but nothing that would come close to this. Mikey can’t imagine ever leaving Gerard, but this is something that might completely fuck their relationship. 

Luckily he’s got the rest of his shift to mull it over. It’s the middle of the day on a Thursday, there’s really not that much to do except think. 

It’s that thought that fucks him. Less than a minute after he thinks it the alarm goes off at the front entrance. Mikey looks in that direction disinterestedly, at least once a shift some cashier fucks up scanning a book and the EAS security system will blare when a customer passes through them. Except this time Keith is escorting a college age guy back to the back, which means the guy tried to shoplift something and got caught.

Mall security comes in a couple of minutes later followed by two police officers in uniform blue. Mikey’s shelving the true crime section with shop backs that customers decided they didn’t want and he watches as the cops and the security guard go into the back. It’s been awhile since he’s actually actively seen a cop have to come in for any other reason than buying a book for their wives or children. Shop lifting is a felony and can carry a prison sentence.

The moment his brain trips into thinking about prison, Mikey’s suddenly not happy about being in the true crime section. He’s sure that every killer in these books get caught no matter how romanticized the story is or how close to reality the writer gets. The killers are the bad guys and _They. Always. Get. Caught._ He’s also not sure he likes the fact that the cops are still in the store twenty minutes after the security guard wanders out of the store.

The longer the cops stay in the store the worse his nerves begin to twitch and shudder. What if they can tell that he’s been doing something illegal? It won’t matter if he hasn’t done anything for weeks now, just that he has before and then wham he’s behind bars. A tiny part of his brain is yelling at him to calm down because cops are not scanners, there’s no way they would know about the things he’s done. It’s being overwritten though, by the numb terror. 

Eventually they come out with the guy between them, cuffed with his head hanging down like he’s already regretting trying to shoplift whatever he thought he needed that badly. When the cop on the left passes by the true crime section he looks at Mikey and doesn’t wave or even smile. The cop just stares at him before nudging the cuffed guy towards the other cop and the three of them head out one of the exits.

Mikey can’t stay out on the floor any longer. He’s freaking out and his brain won’t shut up. It keeps yelling at him _He Knew. He Knew._ and the little, tiny voice has completely vanished under the barrage of negative thoughts. So he does the only thing he can think of and goes to hole himself up in the guy’s restroom for a bit.

***

Gerard’s not great with days and times in the best of situations. But it’s the week before finals, the week all his projects have to be finished. He’s supposed to have worked two shifts so far this week. He didn’t so much call in sick as just not show up, and had Mikey cover his ass working a double shift. He’s got no idea what time it is, or what day it is, and why it matters is a fact bobbing on the horizon.

Half the students in his class are downing Adderol like Chiclets, but Gerard can’t trust himself with pills. Towards the end he was balancing the alcohol with drugs so he wouldn’t pass out. Still, that doesn’t mean he can let himself waste precious minutes with sleep. Half an hour cat naps happen when his hand is cramping and passing out is the best use of time until his muscles stop twitching. He can sleep once his portfolios are handed in.

When his phone goes off, he’s in the zone. It’s almost like a submissive headspace; nothing matters but the pen in his hand and the paper under it. Gerard isn’t thinking about what he’s doing, he’s got half scribbled storyboard notes taped to the curtain beyond his desk so he doesn’t lose them in the mass slowly piling up, but mostly it’s beyond his eyes, or his head, it’s just in his hand. The ringtone going off is like calling out a safeword, it breaks his focus. Mikey’s the only one in his phone he’s bothered to download a special ring for. The amount he’s interacted with Gerard the last few days has been limited to massaging his hand and making sure they have muffins with the wrappers already peeled off because they’re easy for Gerard to eat with his non-drawing hand. If Mikey’s calling that means he’s got a reason he finds important enough to interrupt. Which means Gerard has to answer.

He stands and groans as the vertebrae of his spine crinkle hello. God only knows how long he’s been curled over his desk. He’s got no idea where his phone is, is actually surprised that it’s not completely dead. Mikey must have charged it in the last - however long it’s been. 

By the time Gerard finds it it’s stopped ringing. Mikey hasn’t left a message, Gerard didn’t really expect him too. If it’s important enough to break his concentration it’s important enough that Mikey will call and call until Gerard finally picks up. Except it doesn’t ring again. Gerard stares and runs his thumb over the cracked display, waiting for it to spin into the Star Wars riff again, but it stays silent. 

Finally Gerard presses one and waits for speed dial to kick in. It rings half a time before Mikey picks up. “Oh God. Oh God. I thought they got you. I know that’s stupid, it doesn’t make any sense, but I thought they got you. It wouldn’t be fair, you’re all quitted and stuff, but I thought-”

It’s been a while since Mikey’s had a panic attack. They were a weekly event in Jersey, when they were both constantly worried someone would find out about them, Mikey had a habit of convincing himself people _knew_ , but once they moved he got a lot calmer. The problem is he doesn’t know what this is about. Gerard knows the best words to combat a ‘we’re outed’ panic attack, but he doesn’t know what this is, doesn’t know what he can stay to make Mikey’s brain stop clicking.

“What’s this about, Mikes? You gotta tell me.”

“Cops. Cops. There were fucking cops and I ran and then you didn’t answer and I thought they got you first, they got you and if they got you I’d be alone and I can’t-”

What the fuck, cops. Gerard doesn’t know what this means for them, but he knows one thing. If there are cops searching Mikey out than he’s going down with him. Mikey isn’t Kevin, or Andy, Mikey is someone that matters. Or, even better than going down together, they can pull a Carrie and take everyone down with them. If Gerard locks the doors Mikey can probably take down half the store before they get shot.

“S’okay Mikey, I’ll bring your knives and we can play one last time before they arrest us. Just don’t let them spot you until I get there, okay?” 

“No, no no no no no. They’re. They’re not here anymore. Someone stole a book, they came. It’s not about us, my brain just started and, don’t bring them, it’s okay, I’m okay, we’re not, it was just my brain wouldn’t _stop_ and-”

“Mikey, I have to hang up for a second-”

“Oh god please don’t please please d-”

“I have to hang up so I can call a cab. You have the car, right, and the bus would take too long. I’m gonna come, and things are gonna be cool, right? Yeah. But I need to call the cab. As soon as I’m done I’ll call you back, okay?” It’s almost a disappointment that they’re not about to have their last stand. It’s an unhealthy thought, but it’s in the back of his head nonetheless, which is something he’ll have to bring up next group.

The local cab company number is in the same place it normally is and it doesn’t take long for Gerard to dial the number while staring at the list of bus route information and random shit that Mikey has duct taped to their coffee maker. The tape’s peeling, curling up in places, which means it’s probably time Mikey switched out the piece of tape used to stick and re-stick the information to the coffee maker. After a quick conversation, Gerard’s left to go hunt his shoes and juggle with his phone so he can call Mikey back.

Once they’re found, he drags his shoes to the couch and sits down with his head tilted towards his shoulder so his phone doesn’t slip and fall to the floor. It doesn’t really take much to put his shoes on but he’s never really mastered the one foot hop. Gerard would rather not break something right now. That would be fucking bad timing. He’s talking to Mikey about anything and nothing at all. Random bits and pieces of movie and comic trivia to keep Mikey focused on something different. He’ll even bring up The Care Bears if he has too, because that’s sure to get some sort of snarky comment from his brother for sure. It’s kind of hard to dwell on negative thoughts when you’re trying to belittle the _Care Bear Stare_ and the existence of the Care Bear Cousins, or hell even the Care Bears in general. 

There’s no telling how much longer the cabbie will take so Gerard stands and goes to the front door. It would perhaps be better if he’s waiting outside when the cab drives up. He’s trying to lock the front door when the garish yellow of the cab pulls up. Gerard’s key keeps sticking halfway in the lock because it’s slightly bent and neither Mikey or himself ever seem to remember that they need to get a new copy made. Finally the key slides home and he’s able to lock the front door. 

The cabbie doesn’t seem happy when he gets in the back and tells the guy where to go, while he’s still on the phone with Mikey, snatches of conversations about prequel Yoda verses original Yoda flowing in between Gerard trying to give the cab driver the information he needs. It’s possible the guy is just having a bad day so Gerard just stares out the window and watches houses and buildings blur by while deciding if he wants to bring up Yoda’s fight against Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith or not. On one hand, it’s a good fight scene. But on the other hand it’s too much CGI to be anything but a pretty bit of falsity even if Frank Oz was still around to voice the Jedi Master.

By the time the cab pulls into the mall parking lot, Gerard’s somehow caught in a conversation about Jessica Rabbit that he knows Mikey is poking him about on purpose. It’s a topic they’ve visited before, especially after catching Who Framed Roger Rabbit on basic cable late one night when there was nothing else interesting on besides infomercials about spotless mops and weird squeegee towel things. Gerard’s not going to change his mind about where he stands on the issue and Mikey knows it. 

The cab driver makes this throat clearing sound and Gerard pauses mid-rant about red sequins to notice that they’re stopped and the cab driver is glaring at him from the rear view mirror. He goes back to referencing color index symbolism while trying to find his money. After about maybe two minutes he finds the right amount of bills and pays the cab driver before stepping out onto the sidewalk right in front of the mall. Not even a second later, the cab’s gone. Gerard doesn’t really pay it any attention and just heads on inside.

Mikey’s still holed up in the bathroom nearest Borders. It’s the mall’s smallest bathroom, only two stalls, no urinal. When he knocks on the blue painted metal Mikey pulls the door of the handicapped stall in and seizes Gerard in a rib snapping hug. His breathing is regular, and considering the goading about Jessica Rabbit Gerard’s willing to bet he’s basically back to normal. But if there’s one technique Gerard can place his full confidence in for re-centring Mikey’s brain, it’s an orgasm. Mikey’s still got something like half a shift left, and he’s got another two months worth of final project to squeeze into three days. He needs Mikey to be okay _now_ , they can’t stay huddled in the bathroom forever.

Gerard drops to his knees, Mikey’s face unsurprised but pleased when he looks back up at him. The tile is probably not the cleanest of things, but his knees aren’t soaking wet immediately, and it’s not like he actually gives a shit. He can wash his jeans later, when he’s got the time to do laundry. Mikey’s soft when he gets his zipper down, but it almost makes it better. Gerard loves the way it feels when Mikey swells to hardness in his mouth.

He has to swallow it all. He normally does, but at home it’s not actually important. At work Mikey needs to look professional, and he can’t if he’s got an obvious come stain on his pants. Mikey pulls him up by the chin and leans in for a kiss, their version of a quickie’s afterglow.

Gerard walks him back to Borders. Before Mikey heads inside to file more books he says “since you’re like, already here, you might as well grab food from the food court”, but Gerard hears _I love you_ , and so that’s what he says in return.

***

The bus slows to a stop and Brendon grabs his messenger bag before getting off of the bus. His camera’s in his hand the second he starts walking. It’s mostly out of routine and partly distraction at the moment, because there’s no way he’s about to do what he’s thinking about doing. 

Light reflects off the hood of a parked car, casting a shadow and he snaps a shot. It’s easier to get lost in the familiarity of framing and then taking a picture instead of dwelling on his plans for part of the night now. Last week was a bit of a shock. Okay, one massive shock. It’s not everyday that he stumbles upon a meeting of recovering serial killers. Or at least that’s what they seemed to be. 

They were nice though, and a tiny part of him liked that. It was good to know that these people seemed to care about each other. They didn’t even ask why he was there, just let him sit in and listen. Brendon’ll admit he’d like to be a part of something like that.

It’s probably why he’s deluded himself into thinking he’ll just show up and try to get some hard evidence so he can go to the local authorities. It’s not like anyone would believe him if he just started nattering on about a support group for serial killers. Ryan would probably stare at him for a minute before asking for proof and then ranting at him for joining a random group of people in the middle of nowhere even if he didn’t believe him. 

The truth is he’s easily swayed by some things and friendship given freely is one of those things. It’s not like he has many friends anyways. He’ll just see how this plays out and go from there. Maybe they’ll mention something he can’t not pay attention to and he’ll have to go to the cops. Maybe they won’t. Either way he’s finally at the gate to the abandoned subdivision and it would be a waste to just turn around now.

He can’t help but grin at the number of chairs. Last Thursday there were eight chairs, seven filled, and the one he sat in. Now there’s nine. It seems whoever brings the folding chairs wants to make sure there’s always one open for a stranger. 

“Oh, hey, the silent one is back!” It’s the tall one speaking. He’s still fluorescent, though this time it’s a electric purple hoodie and orange board shorts.

Grimy doesn’t look much different either. His shirt is less dirt splattered and more paint splattered, and Brendon thinks he can see some red spots in his hair. He’s almost positive it’s paint, not blood. Blood would soak in and dry darker on a shirt. At least it did the few times Brendon got nosebleeds thanks to more enthusiastic members of his youth group, near the end of it all. Grimy frowns at Fluorescent. “Gabe, nobody has to talk if they don’t feel like talking. You know that.”

“I wasn’t being a dick about it. I don’t know his fucking _name_ , so he’s the silent one. It’s better that Cash calling him Scrotum McDickCheese, right?” Gabe turns to him, grinning for a moment before narrowing his eyes. “You didn’t think I was being a dick, did you? ‘Cause, sorry, or whatever.”

Before Brendon has a chance to say no, it’s totally valid, he had been silent, and he hadn’t shared his name, the Car Stealer pipes up “I would never call anyone ‘Scrotum McDickCheese’. That’s way beneath my brilliance.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say Andy didn’t appreciate ‘Cummy McGee’.” William drolls from the chair he’s stretched out on. Brendon can see why Kesha wouldn’t want to eat him, he’s long and rail thin. Not really Brendon’s type, but radiating sex nonetheless.

“Whatever, Andy loved it. Don’t front.”

The man Brendon remembers being called RyRy -though that was by Cash, and apparently Cash has a nickname problem- adds in “this can all be avoided if you just tell us your name. Not that you have to, don’t glare at me Way. I’m just sayin’.”

Brendon shrugs. Ryan took three weeks after their first meeting in costuming for the school play to ask his name. Comparatively, these guys care a lot more. “I’m Brendon.”

He’s expecting all seven of them to call out _hi, Brendon!_ , because this is an addictions thing, and that’s mostly all he knows about AA. You say your name, and everyone greets you enthusiastically. By the time he met Ryan, Ryan’s dad was done with trying, and it’s not like Ryan would have been willing to share stories with him. That’s what Spencer was for.

None of them do the _hi, Brendon!_ thing. Instead Mikey starts relating a story about having a panic attack at work after seeing cops come in and arrest a shoplifter earlier that day. It causes an avalanche of agreement, everyone except for Mikey’s buddy Grimy have their own stories to share about spotting police and freaking out. Apparently Cash has it the worst, as even though he’s not running people over anymore he’s still stealing cars, so every time he’s driving he’s gotta worry about The Man. Brendon automatically feels bad for him, before part of his brain steps back and reminds him that you aren’t supposed to feel sorry for people who steal cars.

But it’s not like Cash is destroying the cars. He’s just taking them around for a spin before dropping them off somewhere. Brendon hopes he’s smart enough to be wearing gloves and shit. 

The same part of his brain that poked him to not feel bad for Cash is back again after that thought and Brendon wants to sigh because he shouldn’t feel comfortable around most of these people. But he does. It feels right for him to be here.

Everyone keeps talking around him and he listens. No one here is active and they’re all supportive of each other. How can he even think to try and be a villain and go off to the cops with information? Especially after most of them have been talking about cop related phobias for most of group. 

The only time it gets awkward is when Gabe looks over and says “I still think ‘silent one’ is better than Brendon. More applicable. You know, considering you haven’t said a word in two meetings. Got anything interesting?”

“For fucksakes, Gabe!” Gerard shouts. Intent listening has taught Brendon that Grimy is Gerard, and he likes it. It suits him much better. Having something real to call him in his head makes him feel like less of a jerk. He doesn’t want to be a jerk to Gerard, when Gerard’s being protective of him. He’s never had anyone be protective of him. Starting in junior year he was living by himself, and as it turns out a landlord willing to rent to a sixteen year old didn’t have the safest apartments in the world. Ryan is a great friend, but Brendon has to take care of him, not the other way around. And he can honestly say Jon’s the only boyfriend that’s ever cared about him, and even he ended up caring about someone else more. He likes the way it feels to have Gerard shouting at Gabe to leave him alone if he doesn’t want to talk.

“What! It doesn’t have to be about what he used to enjoy doing to girl scouts! Maybe he knows a good place to get tacos.” Gabe shifts in his lawn chair to face Brendon, though he keeps his hand steady on Kesha’s inner thigh. “Know any good taco places?”

“The first time I did it, it was with my boyfriend, Shawn. He broke up with me for a girl, told me he wasn't gay. But then he came over one time, drunk. He asked me to blindfold him so he couldn't tell I wasn't Jessica-”

“Douchebag!”

“Fuckin’ tool, yo.”

Gerard’s definitely glaring at Gabe and Cash for interrupting, but their taking offense at Shawn’s behaviour makes Brendon feel warmer. He hates telling this story, hates thinking about it. Ryan doesn’t really bring it up anymore, focuses his hatred of Brendon’s exes on names that don’t hurt as much to hear. 

“So I did. Dunno why, but I did. And he fucked me, and his balance was really off, because he couldn't see shit. And then he walked to the door and said it was nice seeing me again, and I remember saying, maybe it was a scream, it hurt coming out of my throat anyway, that he hadn't seen me at all. And the next thing I knew he was on the bed, and his face was covered in blood, and I had his eyes in my hand.”

Brendon takes a deep breath and looks at his shoes. The last part didn’t happen. Not really. Shawn left and he’d curled up on his bed and cried and wished he could hurt him, dreamed a thousand daydreams about scratching out Shawn’s eyes, but he hadn’t actually. He hadn’t even told Ryan for two days, because Ryan had six projects to mail and the shop couldn’t afford Ryan getting in a dither. 

He doesn’t want to look up. It’s still one of the worst memories of his life, easily in the top three, and he doesn’t want to see how the others are reacting to it. He’s forced to when a hand curves itself to the shape of his cheekbone and pulls up lightly. It’s Kesha, and for a second Brendon is terrified she’s going to bite off the tip of his nose. If he could see beyond her cleavage he would probably see William and Gabe planning on how to take her down, but as it is she has a very nice chest. For a girl. 

He has about three seconds for his fight or flight response to kick in before Kesha’s tongue is in his mouth. He blinks and lets her, because of everyone in the group she’s the one he doesn’t want to get in the way of. A minute later she pulls away. “Yummmm. I bet he’d be icky. Grade D. Stupid Shawn would be pigeon meat in a hotdog.”

It takes Brendon a minute to tamp down the adrenaline and take in what’s happening around him. Kesha’s perched on William’s knee, facing the group, grinding down on him slightly. Mikey’s smirking, and Gerard says “while I’m happy you’ve made the commitment to stop, it sounds like no one would have missed him anyway.”

It’s in that moment that Brendon knows he’s coming back next week. Not with a camera, not wearing a wire for cops. He’s coming just to be. From what he can tell, he can do that here.

***

It’s sometime between five thirty and six when Mikey gets home from Borders. Tuesdays are never extremely busy but it’s usually order day so he ends up being the one run around the whole store to make sure they don’t need another two boxes of register tape or three more cases of paper towels. It shouldn’t be hard to keep track of how many rolls of mailing tape they use every week, but somehow Mikey always ends up as the one trying to hunt down if they still have seven rolls instead of the one and a half that he’s only ever been able to find. Either they’re not getting the other rolls of tape in or someone’s pocketing it. 

He doesn’t get paid enough, even at a full time wage, to have to decide if they need more pens or not for the front registers. It’s not his fault the customers are forgetful. One cheapo pen looks exactly like the next. Yet Earl always wants him to go on a quest every Tuesday to make sure they need more. 

He kicks his shoes off the moment the front door closes behind him. They scatter across the floor and he doesn’t pay any attention to where they come to a rest at. It’s not like they’re sentient enough to go anywhere else, he can always find them when he needs them again.

The tv’s on low and there’s some weird cartoon playing on the cable channel. Gee’s asleep on the couch, one shoe still clinging to his foot while the other is wedged under the coffee table. Mikey isn’t going to hold it against his brother for falling asleep on him before he could get home from work. It’s exam week over at the university and Gerard’s already running thin from finishing final projects last week. 

The light in the kitchen is on and Mikey wanders over to the coffee maker. It’s full so he snags an almost empty mug from the counter, only pausing to quickly spill the old coffee into the sink before pouring himself some hot stuff. Mixing it would get him lukewarm coffee, and that’s gross. Gerard’s phone’s sitting right next to the base of the coffee maker and it starts to vibrate and dance to some generic, nameless tune. Waking up Gerard to make him answer it isn’t really an option. But leaving it is probably a shitty idea too, in case it’s a professor saying he dropped his portfolio in a puddle and does he have any originals? 

“Hey.”

“Is this Gerard?”

Mikey thinks he recognises the voice. He talks to a lot of people, between employees and customers and bartenders and club kids as regular as he is, names and faces become a bit of a blur if they’re not constant. The longer he talks the more likely that Mikey will remember where. “No.”

“Damn. I guess he gave me the wrong number.”

“This is Mikey. I live with him.” He’s pretty sure it’s that guy from S. K. Anon, the one that Kesha made out with for a bit before coming against William’s thigh. Which he didn’t even seem to notice, so that coupled with his story about his shitty boyfriend slash first kill means he’s probably gay. Mikey wouldn’t mind tapping that, but from the story he guesses the guy’s got sex issues.

“Oh. But this is Gerard’s number?”

“We’re both your buddies. He’s been doing this longer, but he’s had a rough day, so you’re gonna have to try me out. What’s wrong?”

“I was just at the rental place. I wanted to watch Pan’s Labyrinth, all I wanted to do was watch freakin’ Pan’s Labyrinth, and some jerk took the last copy like three steps before I got there. I wanted to stab him in the eye, I swear.”

Mikey wants to laugh at the idea of renting movies, but he thinks the guy would get the wrong impression from it. “That’s easy. Come over, I’ll have it burned to a disk and shove it into the XBox.”

“Yeah? You don’t have to.”

Mikey rolls his eyes, even though the guy won’t be able to see it. Of course he doesn’t have to, he doesn’t _have to_ do anything others say. “Our tv is the size of most people’s bay windows. Are you driving or bussing?”

The guy says he’s bussing, so Mikey lays out the best route, just like he would for Gee. He hangs up and wanders back into the living room. If he doesn’t wake Gerard up the television might or might not. Mikey’s leaning towards not, considering he managed to fall asleep with his body on two cushion, knees and lower dangling free. A position like that is less of a sleep and more of a pass out. 

He can handle this guy without Gerard’s help. But if he’s going to be over for a while than Mikey won’t be able to do anything with his brother, since sex is probably a trigger. So as far as he can see, he’s got two options. He’s either got to wake Gerard up so they can fuck, or he needs to go jerk off. It’s been a long day, and it’ll be an even longer evening if his stomach is in a coil the whole time.

***

The first thing Gerard notices upon waking up is how badly he needs to piss. He’d considered going when he left the exam room, but really just wanted to get home. As soon as he got the shitty house key to actually work he all he’d wanted was to just sit the fuck down for a minute. Apparently ‘resting your eyes’ is secret code for 'fall asleep sitting up'. He rubs the sleep out of his eyes as he stumbles down the hallway. He’s not exactly wide awake, but with another exam tomorrow he doesn’t have time for more napping.

Mikey’s in the bathroom when he makes it to the end of the hall. Gerard hipchecks him out of the way to stand in front of the toilet. He’s almost finished when he realises the reason his gait is all fucked up; he’s only wearing one shoe. Rubbing his heel against the bowl of the toilet makes it slide off, the taped down towel soaks up the sweat that comes with wearing shoes without socks for a full day. 

He presses the lever and turns to leave the bathroom as the water begins to swirl. That’s when he really sees Mikey. His jeans are around his ankles, one hand clenched around the lip of the sink, the other quickly working his cock. 

It’s not that Gerard is Upset. Maybe slightly miffed. Tweaked, possibly. What Mikey does out of the house is his business, but the house is supposed to be for them. “You couldn’t have waited until I woke up?”

Mikey manages to shrug without loosening the grip of either hand. “We have a guest. We can’t get off while he’s here, so I’m taking care of it. I could do you after?”

Turning down a handjob, or really, anything sexual with Mikey doesn’t happen often. But Gerard’s brain is stuck on the word, revving like a car stuck in a snow drift. “Guest?”

Mikey grunts, and normally that would be hot, because when he loses the ability to speak he’s almost there. It’s not like Gerard’s _looking away_ from Mikey’s head falling forward to crash into the mirror with a bang loud enough he worries for a minute about a hail of glass, but it’s not the focus. Guest. How the fuck are they having a _guest_? It’s as fucked up as Mikey saying that a dragon’s gonna come chill with them at the next S K Anon meeting. At least dragons burn people alive, there’s solid reasoning behind it. A dragon and William could possibly share tips. But a fucking guest, what is that?

They’ve only ever had guests once in the almost four years they’ve owned this house. The first Christmas after they moved to Los Angeles, their parents came for a visit. They had to move everything of Gerard’s into the guest bedroom, so when their parents came in it would be obvious that Gerard was only sleeping in Mikey’s room because the couch was too uncomfortable to sleep on for a week. It was the most awkward week of Gerard’s life, and depressing in that it wasn’t any different from their high school years. Having everything they’d ever wanted, only to have to cram themselves back into moulds of perfect brothers, no more friendly than a parent would want, it was almost painful. Christmas 2007 it was easier to just lie and say they were going skiing with their Mikey’s girlfriend’s family. 

A guest. What the hell do you even do for a guest, when you’re a host? “Do we need to bake, like biscuits and tea? Can the coffee maker make tea? Like if you cut open tea bags and dumped them into the cupcake thing-”

“Filter.”

“Dump them into the filter, would that work? Where do you even buy tea? Can you get that shit in Sev? Or do we need to go to like a import store, for British people food? You know, like Chinatown. But with stripey Sex Pistols flags.”

“Working in reverse order, Union Jack, there is no Londontown, you can get tea anywhere, and I can’t see why it wouldn’t work. But he’s not, like, fuckin’ eighty, so I don’t think he wants tea. Also do you even know what’s in a biscuit? Cause I don’t.”

“Flour? And water?”

“Isn’t that, like, paper mache?”

“Well I wouldn’t put a fucking newspaper in it Mikey. I’m not a moron.”

Mikey smiles and reaches behind him for a towel to wipe his sticky hand on. “Didn’t say you were. I just don’t give enough of a crap to look up recipes when we could play a few rounds of Magic before he gets here. He’s bussing, so it’s gonna be like an hour.”

Gerard shrugs and follows Mikey out of the bathroom, already trying to decide between his Jace Beleren deck and his Saprolings deck. He trusts his brother. If Mikey says it doesn’t matter then he has to believe him.

***

Brendon presses the end button on his cell phone before staring at the still bright display screen. The picture of a smiley face beams at him and he wipes the screen off with the edge of his shirt before flipping it closed. He shouldn’t have lied. He hasn’t rented a movie since sometime last year on a fluke. Usually he’s either watching something he already owns or something his current boyfriend owns. But since he’s single, he hasn’t really been watching much of anything lately, the tv nothing more than staticy white noise in the background when he actually puts it on.

It’s just his apartment’s so lonely and quiet, even if he puts on the soundtrack to The Lion King. And it’s starting to get to him. There’s no way he’s even going to try and take another look at any online dating services. Which leaves him alone in his tidy apartment with only his thoughts to befriend him. It’s never a good thing when that starts to happen.

He could possibly have called Ryan up, but there are only so many hours of the day Brendon can be around Ryan without wanting to hit his head against a brick wall repeatedly. They’re close and Ryan’s his best friend, but still. If Brendon goes over it’s a pretty good bet that he’ll have to keep Ryan from thinking they should take down his new drapes so he can make some weird pair of pants out of them. This set is new, replacing the last set not even two weeks ago. He doesn’t want that right now.

The slip of paper he wrote the bus transfer information on is a stark contrast against the dark stain of his coffee table and he just looks at it for a moment. He didn’t get a hold of Gerard but he did get a hold of Mikey and ended up spouting another lie. Until a few weeks ago he wasn’t so falseful with his words but he can’t stay within these walls right now, so what’s one more tiny one added to the slowly growing pile? It’s not like he’s planning on telling too many more if he can help it.

If he wants to make it to his first transfer on time then he probably needs to stop staring at his handwriting, the loopy scrawl dropping in the middle of his directions, and switch out of his semi-decent shop clothes. He’ll be more comfortable in an old pair of jeans and one of his favorite tees than something respectable enough to keep customers from walking back out the door when they come into The Weather Today. Ryan can get away with wearing suspenders or whatever unusual ensemble he’s come up with for the day because he’s the designer. Brendon doesn’t have that luxury. Not that he has to dress to the nines or anything, but it’s usually better if he doesn’t look completely scruffy and casual. People are willing to browse longer if they think there’s someone around who can manage things. 

Besides, he always thinks better when he’s in one of his favourite pairs of Converse. It’s hard to frown when he can stare at bright yellow smiley face stickers on the side of his purple pair, or trace the lines of color fading off of the rainbow stickers stuck to the white portions of his blue pair. He should start wearing them around the apartment to lighten his mood, but he’s afraid doing so will dim the charm. It would suck if that happened.

It doesn’t take long to walk in his bedroom, change, and fish out a pair of Converse from their home under the foot of his bed . If he puts them anywhere else he tends to forget them, and he wears them too much for them to go in the closet. Once he’s finished lacing up, he heads back into the living room and retrieves the bus info he’ll need. 

On his way out he catches a glimpse of the newspaper laying where he left it when he first got in. Hopefully the entertainment section, folded up and sitting straight on the cushion next to the rest of the paper, hasn’t steered him wrong. 

It’s over an hour before he’s trudging up the sidewalk of 537 Walnut Ave. He coils his headphones around his iPod and shoves the entire thing in his pocket. Brendon hesitates for a moment at the door, age old battle of knock on the door vs ring the doorbell. He ends up knocking. It’s less intrusive and Mikey did say Gerard had had a rough day. He doesn’t want to be contributing to a headache or something.

Gerard answers the door. He’s wearing a hoodie and pyjama pants covered in symbols Brendon’s pretty sure are comic book related. That or he’s just rocking Halloween in May with all the bats. “Hey Brendon, we’re happy to have you over. Kick off your shoes, Mikey’s melting butter for popcorn, bathroom’s down the hall, movie’s ready if you still want to watch it but if you’d rather something else that’s cool ‘cause you’re the guest, we’re happy that you came... Did I say that already?”

Brendon smiles at Gerard and steps into the house. He bends to untie his shoes and with his head so close to the ground can’t help but notice that the mat is dirty. Like, high school locker room dirty. It’s not really his place to bitch them out for not cleaning the mat recently, but he doesn’t really want his socks touching it. He likes his socks, they’re blue and white striped. He compromises by wiggling his feet until he’s standing with the tips of his toes on the heels, and leaps safely to the carpet.

“You, like, always jump at the threshold?” Mikey asks from the open exit of the kitchen. “That a OCD thing?”

“Uh, no? Your mat was just kinda dirty, from all the shoes, I guess. I didn’t want to track it in with my socks.”

Mikey shuffles a few feet closer, peering at the mat in question. He shrugs. “It looks fine to me. ‘Snot like there’s any snow on your shoes for wet spots. Nice stickers, by the way.”

Brendon decides Mikey has to be joking, and smiles at him. Nobody would think grey-brown-black from grime is fine. Before he has a chance to thank him for the compliment -which is a complete novelty, Ryan does a lot of things, but complimenting Brendon on his style is not one of them- the microwave pings and Mikey goes back into the kitchen.

“Ow! Motherfuck!”

Gerard whips his head towards the kitchen, calling “what’s wrong?”

“Butter boiled over. Mug’s hot and slippery as fuck.”

He snorts. “You’re such a fuckin’ baby. If you’re burned put cold butter on it and let’s watch the movie!” He turns back to Brendon. “That is, if you think it’ll be okay. If you’ve had a chance to calm down a bit on the ride here, watching it might restart your rage?”

Brendon shakes his head and lies as best as he can. “I think it’ll be better if we watch it. It was just so _frustrating_ , you know?”

“You’re talking to an ex, lemme see, I think Wikipedia classifies it as Mixed Power slash Control killer. Yeah, I understand frustration. Pick either couch, me and Mikey’ll sit on the other.” Gerard gestures expansively to the room behind him, which Brendon can only assume is the living room. 

He settles on the two seater under the window. The view isn’t quite as good for the massive tv, but it’ll give Mikey and Gerard more room on the three seater. Roommates don’t always like to be cramped, that was both how he first hooked up with Devon and the reason they ended up breaking up. Apparently someone can only put their arm around someone’s shoulder for so long before they’re clingy like ‘wet toilet paper on dress shoes’. Brendon doesn’t want to be the reason for Mikey and Gerard fighting, he can already tell they’re close friends. 

Mikey comes in with an Orville bag of popcorn. Brendon frowns, confused for a second, and then sees the side of the red paper bag slowly turning transparent from the melted butter. He almost wants to take a picture of it, but Spencer probably wouldn’t care about Brendon’s new maybe friends, and his phone is in his back pocket anyway. 

Gerard flicks the combination of buttons on the Xbox controller that makes the movie play, and Mikey stretches his arm over the armrest to tip the slowly dissolving bag at Brendon. Brendon digs his hand in and grabs a handful. It tastes slightly odd, almost coffee-like, but Brendon eats it just like he ate the failcone. Complainers get no friends.


	4. Chapter 4

Mikey took the day off of work because he knew Gerard would do this. There hadn’t been a question in his mind that his brother would do this, and if Gerard could come to the mall on his day off and blow him out of a panic attack, he could hardly refuse to do the same thing. Minus the mall, because Gerard wasn’t dumb enough to take a shift on Grades Out day either.

Gerard used to be pretty confident about his marks. And then he fucked up the first semester of second year bad enough that he had to double up on classes second semester to try and pass all of it, and rather than buckle down to get shit done he drank more and started to even himself out with drugs. Ever since that May’s grades telling him he had to redo the year, Gerard’s looked at every assignment and test as an opportunity for professors to tell him how much of a waste of space he is.

“Seriously, fuckin’ just open it.” 

It’s frustrating as hell. Gerard woke up at ass in the morning -only a few hours later than the time Mikey usually gets in from a club, an hour that should never be witnessed except for the few times one has an opening shift- and drove to the university by himself, completely foiling Mikey’s plans. He’d figured they’d go together, and he’d give Gee a handjob on the drive there to take the edge off. Instead he woke up at noon, cursing at the cold spot on Gerard’s side of the bed, and wandered into the kitchen to find Gerard fully dressed and staring at a sealed envelope.

“But, what if-”

“You’re looking at it like it’s got, like, anthrax and AIDS covered needles inside. It’s just grades. Stupid numbers.”

“Like it matters to you. You didn’t even go to college.”

Mikey’s first instinct is to knock Gerard the fuck out for insinuating he’s better just because he went, when they could only afford one of them, and Gerard was the one with the grant money. His second instinct is to ignore it, because Gerard’s trying to piss him off. An argument means he can avoid opening it for another hour. His third instinct wins. He punches his douchy brother in the shoulder and says “look, we’ll make a bet.”

“What?”

“If you’ve got anything below seventy five percent I get to do whatever I want to you. If it’s all above seventy five percent you get to do whatever you want to me.”

“Bets are supposed to be lose-win. That’s pretty freakin’ win-win, Mikey.”

“Are you denying my sex bet?” he questions, crossing his arms. He’s pretty sure Gerard did great practical work for his folder, it’s the exams he’s not so sure about. Watching Pan’s Labyrinth turned into watching Hellboy to contrast the director’s vision, and watching the first demanded a viewing of the sequel, meaning Mikey had to drive Brendon home at three am while Gerard frantically crammed for that Wednesday’s exam. But he’s sure that Gerard _passed_ , and if he got a sixty in that class Mikey’s not really going to be disappointed about the opportunity to drip wax all over his brother. 

“No, but I still don’t think it’s a bet if we both win.”

It’s another stall tactic, because they’ve spent hours before arguing the finer points of word usage in comics. So it’s not hard to think Gee wants them off on a tangent. 

“Okay, a mutual agreement that sex will occur for knowing what your grades are. Just open the envelope and we can debate word usage later.”

Gerard fiddles with the envelope, but at least he’s touching it now. Mikey sighs.

“If I end up opening it I’m going to duct tape the letter to the fridge so we can see it every day. Every DAY...”

His brother glares at him before looking down at the envelope and tearing into the folded crease at the top of the thing. The sheet of paper is folded in thirds and there’s two or three tears in the fold from where Gerard got a little too rough with the envelope. After that, Mikey waits because pushing anymore isn’t a good idea. Plus with the page out of the envelope now, Gee’s going to be curious even if he doesn’t want to know.

Maybe a minutes passes, and Gerard unfolds the sheet of paper with a quick snap of the page. He scans it for a second before passing the sheet to him. Mikey skims the generic university paragraph that’s over the list of Gerard’s grades and smiles when he finishes with the page. So, okay, maybe they’ll have to try wax next time. Mikey’s totally fine with that.

“What do you want most of all, Gee? I’ll do _anything_ ” Mikey says, letting his voice drop into a lower register. His willingness isn't exactly a new fact, but a reward is a reward. 

“Over-stimulation.”

Mikey grins, taking Gerard’s hand and tugging him into standing. He can already picture Gee crying.

***

Gerard settles on the bed with his arms raised. The handcuffs are still around the headboard from last time. There’s not really a point in taking them down, they get used too often for that. Mikey’s fingers are quick as he tests the inside of the loops for rough edges before he guides Gerard’s wrists and closes them. Marks and bruises are fine, are often wanted, but they both like to avoid cuts. 

“Pull?” Gerard complies. They’re on tight enough to not slip past his knuckles, loose enough that he’ll still have blood flow. 

Mikey’s next move is to disappear under the bed for a moment. If Gerard arched his body he might be able to see what he was grabbing, but there’s no reason to. He trusts Mikey. Whatever he’s getting is something that he’ll want. 

The first touch of fleece on his ankle is enough to make his toes flex. He’d cup his dick if his hands weren’t occupied. Of all the toys and pieces they have stashed under the bed, the spreader bar is probably his favourite. Smooth brown leather cuffs with black fleece lining curl first around his left ankle, then his right as Mikey drags his foot to the side. A twenty four inch spread means everything’s exposed. It’s nothing Mikey hasn’t seen every day for years, but it’s so much different when it’s not a choice. He flushes at the thought, and Mikey must notice because his hand moves slowly up his inseam, calf to knee to thigh. The graze of fingertips is light, barely there, almost a tickle and Gerard already wants more. If he could reach out, he would. Thankfully he can’t, or this would be over way too soon. 

Mikey slowly starts to wrap fingers around his dick. No pressure or movement, just the warm weight of his curled fingers. Gerard does his best to breathe without trying to push up into the feeling. There’s no telling what Mikey’ll do if he does. His brother can be a huge tease sometimes, so it’s possible he’d trace light touches down the side of Gerard’s thigh if he tried to push things along faster.

Eventually, he moves his hand. Gerard sighs and bites back a disappointed sound when Mikey pulls his hand away after only two strokes. Seconds later his hand returns, this time it’s slick with lube and the motion in smoother. He doesn’t go slow and Gerard can feel his muscles tensing already. It doesn’t take long for him to come from the pace and pressure.

Mikey doesn’t stop stroking. Which is what Gerard wanted, before, when his brain wasn’t thinking about how his dick would feel. He instinctively starts to curl, not realising it won’t protect anything, just make his ass more available. Mikey reaches and shoves the bar back down on the bed, hard. 

His cock is on fire by the time Mikey chooses to pull away. He raises his hand to his mouth, tongue darting out to lick the length of his ring finger. “S’like strawberry flavoured you. Wanna try?”

Mikey doesn’t give Gerard the chance to choose, just leans forward and shoves two fingers into his mouth. They rest hard on the back of his tongue, gag reflex making his throat quiver. Gerard swirls his tongue tentatively and when Mikey doesn’t frown or slap his side he continues, hallowing his cheeks around the digits. Once they’re fully clean, Mikey slips them out and grabs his cock again. It’s still too soon, but he knows Mikey won’t stop even if he asks for him to. That’s not how this game works.

Gerard hisses as his brother starts up a faster rhythm than before, torso twisting in either direction as his handcuffs rattle loudly. It’s impossible but Mikey’s starting to pull a second orgasm out of him, body warring with itself between _too much_ and _oh yeah_. 

A buzzing breaks his thoughts. “Oh god, oh god,” Gerard groans. He doesn’t want to know which one it is, it’ll only make it worse. Sometimes when Mikey’s like this he doesn’t even use it, just turns it on and puts it aside to crank up Gerard’s anticipatory nerves. 

Tonight is not one of those nights. The buzzing stops as snug silicone slides down his length. Once the cock ring is fully situated Mikey presses the button a single time, to get the lowest vibration. It’s still too much, and it’s terrifying besides. If Mikey’s starting with the least amount that means he has plans of working up the levels. “Oh god, I don’t think I can-”

Mikey presses hard on his perineum and Gerard nearly bites through his tongue as he jerks. “Of course you can. I bet you can have like five orgasms.”

No, forget the last. _That’s_ terrifying. Mikey’s got one of the best poker faces Gerard’s ever seen, and retail is full of people neatly masking their loathing of customers and bosses. Sometimes it’s impossible to tell when he means something, and Gerard wouldn’t put it past his brother to try. 

“I’ve gotta go talk to someone. Call me when you’re coming.” Mikey smirks at him, hand causally wrapped around his erection as he exits the bedroom, leaving Gerard to writhe as much as he’s able to. It’s going to be a long afternoon.

***

Cool air jets past him when Brendon walks into the grocery store not far from The Weather Today. He didn’t have to take the bus, even if he had to wait forever for the crosswalk to acknowledge his presence. It’s easier this way. It also means there’s not a three percent chance that Ryan will follow him. Usually Ryan’s out the shop door the moment Brendon puts the cash drawer up, probably so he won’t get his clothing stuck in the gate when Brendon closes it. Occasionally though, he’ll mill around and shadow Brendon. The last time that happened, they ended up in a tiny curio shop for three hours because Ryan just _had_ to check out the fabric splotches they had. Brendon wanted to go home but there was no way he was leaving Ryan alone. He’d end up coming into The Weather Today the next morning having to field calls for a million orders of fabric they don’t need if he left. 

Ryan has an aversion to the bigger grocery stores. He says they suck all the life blood out of neighbourhoods. Grocery stores are cheaper than local grocers most of the time though, so Brendon still finds himself wandering the long shelved sections instead of the cramped tiny spaces of the small family owned shops. The location means he doesn’t have to worry about Ryan trying to ask questions while tagging along. Mikey had called during work and Ryan had walked by when Brendon was hanging up. He doesn't get many calls so it was automatically assumed he was talking to Jon. An hour later Ryan had finally stopped ranting enough that customers weren’t afraid to shop the few racks of merchandise they have set up for walk ins.

The florescent lights bounce off the glossy cream coloured tiles of the store and Brendon watches his work shoes scuff across the surface. He needs to find a cake. Mikey had called about Gerard passing his classes and could Brendon pick up a cake for celebratory purposes, as they didn’t have ‘that shit you put in the fridge so it doesn’t smell like ass’. He’d agreed because, well, cake is sweet sugary goodness and it’s the perfect thing to celebrate with. Plus he likes hanging out with Gerard and Mikey, so it’s not like he’s going to turn them down. His shoes take him to the bakery section of grocery store. The line of bakery freezers is right before the fresh baked hot goods section and he starts to look at the frozen cakes before aborting that move. He needs something that won’t be melted by the time he gets there. That rules out the ice cream cakes. 

Five minutes later, plus two more for his wait in the short checkout line, Brendon has a cake he hopes works. It’s not fancy but it’s not plain either. The design is abstract and it doesn’t say anything more than hooray on it. If anything it’s cake right? It’s not like he’s showing up with stale cookies. Their house has enough of them already, along with open bags of chips in a dozen flavours, and half crumpled bags of old fast food.

Gerard looks a bit wrung out when he answers the door, like he didn’t sleep well or something. He perks up though when Brendon thrusts the box of cake at him, shouting a loud congratulations. Brendon does his customary leap onto the carpet to avoid the mat, not that it helps a lot. He’s pretty sure they haven’t steamed the carpet in a long time; the fibres are matted down in the high traffic areas and hard and vaguely crunchy around the edges of the carpet.

Like both of the times he’s been over, Mikey and Gerard are both wearing hoodies. It makes sense, as their air conditioning is cranked to Canada levels of cold. Just like the last time Brendon can’t help but wonder what came first; a broken temperature gauge leading to hoodies, or awesome band hoodies leading to needing an excuse to wear them. Brendon’s leaning towards the latter, their music collection is extensive. If he’d thought for a second, he might have stolen one of the long sleeved shirts from the store. Only if he’d thought Ryan wouldn’t notice, of course. But fifteen minutes into Fanboys Brendon’s got goosebumps, and has his knees pulled to his chest in hopes of conserving body heat.

“Will snuggling fuck your head up?” Brendon stares at Mikey for a minute. Ryan’s not great with physical affection, and occasionally grumbles that Brendon’s a snuggle-whore before giving him a five-seconds-or-less hug. Brendon can’t remember a time in his life that he’s turned down a hug. Then it occurs to him that he’s supposed to be an ex-killer, who went after his boyfriend for not loving him. Mikey probably thinks snuggling might be a trigger, just like how he doesn’t like passing by the tiny surplus army equipment store in the mall any more.

“Uh, no?”

In answer Gerard shuffles from the arm seat to the middle. Brendon doesn’t waste a second moving into the vacated seat; warm toilet seats are gross, but warm bed spots and chair spots are like gifts of happiness. Gerard shudders when he presses his hip against his, a second quake comes when Brendon curls in with his head on his shoulder and his left hand naturally lands on Gerard’s thigh. Brendon starts to sit up, not sure if he’s crossed some sort of line. It’s not like he knows everything about Gerard’s past, even if he is pretty talkative at group. 

Beyond him Mikey shakes his head and snakes his arm past Gerard’s back to tug his shoulder back down. “It’s cool, he’s fine.” Brendon settles back down. He didn’t really want to sit up anyway. He likes the way Gerard feels against him, soft and radiating heat.

The thing is, he’s pretty sure it doesn’t matter if he likes the way Gerard feels, because he’s pretty sure Gerard likes the way Mikey feels. They haven’t done anything in front of him here, and they aren’t like Kesha and Gabe and William are in group, practically getting off in front of an audience, but Brendon thinks he can sense a thing between them. He doesn’t like not being in a relationship, but he’s not about to break up someone else’s to get what he needs. And he can get most of it between Ryan and Mikey and Gerard anyway. Ryan knows everything about him, even if he forgets most of it at most times, and if Gerard and Mikey are willing to provide hugs Brendon knows he can get by.

After the movie is over Gerard switches the source to tv, and flips to Comedy Central. They get in about half an episode before Mikey’s pulling himself out from under Gerard and standing. Brendon figures bathroom break but when he comes back ten minutes later he’s wearing a v-neck shirt, grey with black hibiscus printed at the hip, over black jeans. Ryan would think the shirt was boring, and Walmartish, which is his equivalent to what Brendon’s old pastor would call demonic. He would like the jeans though, they’re ruched and make Mikey’s legs look even longer than they already are. 

“See you later Brendon. Night, Gee,” he says as he shoves a bag of chips on the table to get the keys that are underneath. It’s only Brendon’s quick dive that stops the bag from falling off, open end down.

It’s not until the door slams that Brendon thinks to ask where he’s going. Gerard shrugs, then clarifies “dunno. Some bar. Orgasms for everyone, everyone wins.”

Brendon frowns. It doesn’t make sense, not when they spent the last two hours with Gerard’s head on Mikey’s bony shoulder. He doesn’t know if it’s his place to ask. After all, this is only the sixth time he’s seen them, and three of those were at meetings. He doesn’t have to, Gerard opens his mouth first. “You never get ditched to get laid?”

Brendon’s never actually known Ryan to get laid. Mostly Ryan just bitches about his relationships. He’s claimed to have a few girlfriends, but Brendon’s never seen them, not even cell phone pictures. But he doesn’t want to make Mikey sound like even more of a dick, so he shrugs. “Do you want me to take off too?”

“We’ve got a whole night of shitty tv in front of us,” Gerard offers. Brendon decides that’s a no, and snuggles into Gerard’s side a bit harder, reminding himself that it’s not a date. It can’t be a date. He doesn’t know if Gerard is gay, and you can’t have a date if the other person doesn’t know it’s a date. This is just two friends hanging out. And snuggling.

***

His cell phones rings and Mikey groans. Maybe if he just ignores it, it’ll stop trilling out The Imperial March. Some days he wonders why he even set that as the ring tone for Borders. It had seemed funny and slightly apt at the time. But now it’s just sad, because he can’t think about Darth Vader without envisioning Earl and there’s something wrong about that on a pretty basic level. Maybe he should change it to something like the witch’s theme for The Wizard of Oz, it would be just as fitting and it’s not like they watch that movie often, while Star Wars is pretty much an any day any time thing.

Vader’s theme ends, only to loop through and start playing again.

“Fuckin’ hell.”

When he answers, the day shift supervisor sighs and asks him if he’ll come in a little early. She has to go pick her daughter up from daycare and take her to a relative’s house for some reason that Mikey tunes out. The only thing he hears is ‘come in early’. He could easily say no, but fuck it. Maybe if they keep asking him to pick up extra hours Earl will get off his back about needing Thursday nights off along with Gee. 

“Sure.”

It’s all he says before closing his phone. There’s no way he’s going to sit around and listen to the day shift supervisor whine about her life and take up both of their time. If he’s going to have to go in, he’s going to pick up as much time as he can instead of nattering on about nothing. Plus he’s sure to hear the same thing, including directions for when she’ll be back when he gets in.

Technically he’s not getting much that much earlier than he normally would. Getting called at eight thirty to be in for nine, as compared to getting up at nine thirty to wake Gerard with sex before they both start at eleven isn’t that huge of a leap, when looking at numbers. It’s just that eight thirty seems so much more morningish than when he sees ten on the clock beyond Gerard’s writhing body. 

There’s no time to shower, not when Marcie is waiting for him to arrive. He probably wouldn’t anyway, showering in the morning makes him cold. Mikey stands a few feet away from his closet and sprays the entire thing with Febreze before he pulls out a pair of black jeans and one of his three uniform shirts. If he smells like ‘meadows & rain’ and his breath is covered by the coffee that’s brewing as he’s printing off Gerard’s bus schedule it’ll be good enough hygiene for anyone that actually gives a shit.

He’s tying his converse the with sunrises painted on -Mikey feels slightly better when he can inject some irony into his day- when Gerard pads down the hall, naked except for a old Slayer shirt. “Choo goin? 'Leven?”

“You still work at eleven. Marcie’s kid has lice or ebola or what the fuck ever, it can’t stay at daycare, I have to go cover her.”

“'L come.”

“Go back to bed, it’s way too early to exist if you don’t have to.”

Gerard turns around and pads back to their bedroom. Mikey considers following him for a kiss, but he’d rather wait and get one at work. Nothing to brighten a shift better than a nice little fuck off to Shannon and her Catholic horseshit. Every time they kiss she crosses herself and scowls, which only makes him want to blow Gerard in the middle of the Travel section. It would get them fired, and they can’t afford that, but it’s a nice thought anyway. 

He’s trying to lock the piece of crap door when it’s tugged out of his hands. Gerard’s standing there, eyes closed, swaying slightly, but he’s dressed for work and that’s what counts. Mikey shrugs and lets Gerard follow him blindly to the car. It’s his choice. Mikey’s his brother, not his mom.

Mikey is a nice person. Some people might say he’s incredibly nice, and he wouldn’t disagree. Because he’s the most ridiculously awesomely nice person ever, he put a mix of the Crash Test Dummies best songs in the CD player instead of Death Magnetic. The Day That Never Comes is cycling through his head on repeat, the lyric _love is a four letter word, and never spoken here, love is a four letter word, here in this prison_ in particular, but Gerard cannot handle the awesome that is Metallica in the morning. They’re halfway though I Think I’ll Disappear Now before he can even talk intelligibly. Gerard explains, eyes still closed, that by nine a lot of the stores in the tiny strip malls around their mall will be open, and he can go give money to self owned businesses rather than wandering in Sears. Mikey sort of doubts his ability to walk anywhere right now but doesn’t bring him down by saying it. He’ll give Gerard the keys, so if he needs to sleep in the back seat for an hour he can.

When he pulls into the parking lot, there’s not many cars around so he parks close to the entrance before cutting off the ignition and passing the keys over to Gee. After a quick kiss, he gets out and heads into the mall. There’s no telling what he’ll walk into. The store could be clean and stocked the way it should be or it’ll be a mess and he’ll end up running around making sure they have copies of the best sellers on the shelves for anyone insane enough to want to wander into a book store before lunch time.

Marcie greets him the moment he walks in the doors, almost as if she was lying in wait at the entrance watching for his arrival instead of making sure the store got opened properly or giving the morning cashier things to do. He’s pretty much tuning out anything she’s saying about her family emergency while he walks to the back to clock in. As long as Marcie’s coming back so he can do whatever Earl wants to assign to him when he gets in eventually then Mikey could care less if her kid’s walking around with some mutated version of the death flu. As long as he or Gee aren’t exposed to anything it doesn’t matter.

The moment he swipes in she tells him there’s a list in the office of things that need to be done by the time Earl shows up. She hands him her key ring with her register override key and swipes out. There’s no way he’s going to be able to get change but the overpriced coffee shop slash bakery that’s built right into the side of the store should have someone who can help him with that should he need anything.

It’s been awhile since he’s had to watch the store while a manager’s had to step out for whatever reason so it takes a minute for him to open the door. Marcie’s keys are in no order and he ends up having to cycle through four keys before finding the right one. The list is sitting on the desk. He’s not surprised that it’s long as fuck and convoluted. Part of this shit are things the cashier could already be doing. And it’s not like he hasn’t ordered before so that’s five things off the list. If they want anything else done they can do it themselves or call someone else to come in early. He’s not The Flash, nor is he capable of multiplying himself and even then he wouldn’t because it’s not like they’d pay any of the copies for their own work. The joys of retail.

***

It’s quite possible he’s spent too much on candy, if a wallet empty of change and one dollar bills means he’s spent too much. But Gerard can hardly be blamed. He’s never really walked around the area surrounding the mall. The times he has to take the bus to work there’s a bus loop beside the back set of six doors. There’s no reason to venture further. For the last four years there’s been a candy store a mere five minute walk away and he’s never been inside it. Clearly the only possible answer is to make up for lost time.

His wallet is light in his pocket, but there’s an entire _bag_ weighing down his wrist. Chocolate flavoured gum, rainbow stripe liquorice, hard candies that look like raspberries but are so sour that his eyes started watering, and a dozen other things. Gerard’s seriously considering splicing his coffee budget to allow for frequent visits to Candy Mountain.

According to his Green Lantern watch, he’s still got almost an hour before he has to be in Borders. Gerard continues his walk, stopping occasionally. Everything in the mall is mass produced, to make sure Hot Topics and Bed Bath and Beyonds across the nation have the exact same items. These streets are different, stores with half the square footage pimping a hundred different kinds of yarn, or educational toys for kids. 

He pauses in front of one window. The sign says ‘The Weather Today’, which makes no sense in relation to the window with two finely dressed mannequins. Gerard isn’t much for high fashion. It seems a waste of time to worry about what you’re wearing all the time. But it’s not the fabric that catches his eye. It’s the employee near the back of the store. He’s almost positive it’s Brendon.

There’s the rare possibility that it could be someone else so Gerard watches from the store window as maybe-Brendon slowly starts to hang up a stack of clothes on a rack built into the side of the wall. The ruffles of one pale pink shirt sleeve tries to attach to the man's wrist like some semi-sentient tentacle monster and it takes a moment for him to untangle his hand from the thing. It means Gerard sees him flail full bodily in such a way that’s familiar enough to mean maybe-Brendon is indeed actual-Brendon and not some look-alike impostor.

The store isn’t his normal thing. He’s not exactly picky when it comes to his black shirts, they can come from pretty much anywhere. But he’s still got some time to spare before he has to be back at the mall for his shift so he decides to stop being a staring creeper and goes on inside. There’s some random pop song playing from the overhead speakers and Gerard can barely hear Brendon lightly signing along while he shakes out some gauzy slip of fabric out so he can hang it up. Gerard’s not even sure if the strip of cloth is a shirt, a tiny wrap around skirt, or some weird alternate dimension’s version of a shawl. It probably doesn’t matter. People buy unusual shit all the time.

The moment the door shuts behind him there’s this low, tinny chime sound and Brendon spins around with a hanger in one hand and a pair of extremely bright pants in the other. A cheery greeting partially falls from his lips before he sort of stills and cuts off his hello. His head does this quick whip in the direction of the far back of the store, past the partitioning curtain, and Gerard tries his best to see what’s back there. The way Brendon’s acting it could be something like a gnome or ogre. Gerard’s curious.

“Hey Brendon. I have candy, sweet sweet candy! Wanna lick o’ my lollipop?” Gerard holds his face for a grand total of three seconds before snickering. He and Mikey have tried to be really good about not sexualizing things in front of Brendon. It would be like slicing a salad in front of Mikey, just cruel. But sometimes they forget and each time sex comes up Brendon flushes while giggling. Except today. Something’s definitely up, Brendon just glances behind him again.

Gerard shakes the bag of treats at Brendon, insisting until Brendon plunges his hand in. It comes out with a trail mix of sugary awesome. The woman at Candy Mountain twisted each of his baggies separately and made them look nice, but he’d opened each of them outside the shop and shook them out. Better to have a mix.

“Is this what you, like, do? Sew lace to things?” Gerard’s never seen Brendon in anything beyond a pair of jeans and a shirt. He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy that would be into high fashion either.

A disembodied voice shouts from beyond the curtain “Hah! Brendon doesn’t sew anything. He has the sewing ability of a dyslexic goat.” 

Brendon turns again, and shouts back “at least I don’t get stuck in the door!”

Gerard shakes his head slightly. As insults go, they’re both pretty weak. Wizard of Oz’s doesn’t even make sense. But it does make sense in general. If Brendon’s got a boss that ridicules him, of course he doesn’t want his friends to be around when it happens. Mikey probably wouldn’t want Brendon to see how Earl treats him either.

It takes a minute to get beyond the sharp angles and -is that fake fur pants?- bold fabrics to notice the art on the wall. Another good thing about indie shops is how they decorate. The Weather Today is nothing like Borders, mint walls that contrast with the clothing nicely without seemingly sickly green, rather than soul sucking industrial white. As an artist Gerard doesn’t approve of white. Even better is instead of motivational posters of cookie cutter children with books and butterflies and shit, there are actual neatly framed 8x10 art prints. He likes them all, but one in particular catches his eye.

The frame itself is bland and basic, just a thin line of solid black that does it’s job of housing the print without any extra frills. It doesn’t take away from the print though. In fact, there’s something engaging about the simplicity of the inky frame in contrast to the colors that seem to squirm across the glossy texture of the picture that’s protected behind the reflectivity of the glass. The print itself isn’t exactly a landscape but it’s also not a portrait, nor is it composite. Instead it’s more like a still of pigments in motion.

Gerard’s pretty sure the print is an enlargement of a tiny piece of graffiti that’s been painted and repainted over and over again on the side of a broken down building. Somehow though, with the angle and slight use of blurred focus, the building itself isn’t recognizable and that makes the story dancing from one shade of spray painted pigment to the others even more alluring. This swirl could be the hand of a zombie or the letter k, while that smudge could be the Loch Ness Monster’s snout at the very least. It’s captivating and there’s something alluring about it, like the color could just tip over the edges of the simple frame and drip all over the floor in a puddle of exaggerated expression. 

Gerard digs his hand into the pocket of his hoodie. The sketchbook barely fits in it, the metal spiral is nearly crushed and the covers are creased to shit. But it’s there when he needs it, so nothing else matters. As long as he can keep opening the thing he’s good. Once he finds his pen it doesn’t take long to flip to a clean page and start sketching something. Lines skew into each other and in minutes he has the rough outline of a zombie pirate in ruffles carrying a rapier fighting a mutated version of Nessie. It’s not exactly refined or spiffed up but he likes it. Some heavy shading gives the pirate more weight and presence on the page and it makes him wish he had a red pen as well because a sash would look great around the sketch’s waist. Not to mention the fact that there’s only so much shadowing he can do for blood around Nessie’s wicked sharp fangs with his pen before it just looks wrong. Red would pop so much better. 

A couple of squiggles and some dashes later there’s the start of a foamy sea in the background. He adds a triangle or five into the waves to allude to sharks. He’s thinking about adding a ship in the far left corner, all billowing sails with ragged and unraveling edges, when he realizes he’s getting sucked in by the process again. If he’s not careful he’ll end up camping out on the floor here just drawing for hours, and he’ll miss his shift, which would suck. So he closes his sketchbook and ends up staring at the print again. It really is magnetic.

“Gee?” Brendon starts. He sounds almost apologetic, but with an undertone of something like worry. “I’m glad you like the prints, but you sorta need to go.”

“Right. Buy something or leave, commission workers and it’s not like I’m attracting the clientele you’d want.” Makes sense.

“Uh. Yeah. That. We could meet for lunch or something?”

Gerard’s not exactly sure why Brendon is whispering, but might as well enjoy the fun. He tiptoes super stealthily to Brendon and whispers in his ear “I work in the mall. See you in the food court at two?”

Brendon nods and Gerard leaves.

He gets to Borders with somewhere between five and three minutes left to spare. As long as he’s not late there’s no reason to worry. In fact, he has three to five minutes where he can pull his sketch pad out and add a line or to if he wants to. He doesn’t though because he’ll just want to add more and more lines. His hoodie gets stashed in his locker and he swipes in with a minute to spare. 

They put him on the register and he gets to watch Mikey run around trying to order things whenever he wanders into Gerard’s line of sight. He rings up people’s items and asks if they want a Borders card. It’s all boring, even when he ends up having to try and reorganize the shelves of supplies that sit behind the check out counter. He’s pretty sure Earl will have tomorrow’s morning shift change the supplies around again. He never likes how Gerard does it, yet somehow it’s always on his list of busy work whenever he’s clocked in. 

By the time his lunch break rolls around, he’s rang up maybe thirty people. Though it could have been only twelve. It’s not like he counts the people in his line. He probably should because Earl’s never happy that he won’t call for help if he has a long line, but standing in line isn’t going to hurt anyone and no one ever complains to him about it so he doesn’t ever ask. He’s also had two returns and one exchange. Sometimes those can be interesting. Today, not so much. He had one old lady who didn’t need the needle point do it yourself booklet that her daughter sent her and a single mom who accidentally bought two copies of a how to garden in your house manual. The exchange was on a new audio book that kept skipping, so that was an easy fix.

Another cashier shows up to switch places and Gerard walks to the back and swipes out for lunch. Mikey shows up not even fifteen seconds later to swipe out. They walk to the food court together and end up settling on Wendy’s. They eat from each place equally, but today the line there is the shortest. Once they pick up their food and pay it’s time for him to start scanning the sea of tables for Brendon. It takes him two glances of the sitting area to find him at one of the few tables shored up near the base of one of the food court’s cheapo, fake ass palm trees. Mikey makes a comment about the palm tree eating them the same moment that Brendon looks up.

Gerard’s not sure, but it looks like Brendon’s face falls for a moment before recomposing itself as he spots them. It’s probably the fries he’s eating, sometimes you get the ones that have been sitting in the deep fryer for the entire morning and sheer into shards of potato flavoured oil when you bite down. Gerard likes the way they taste, but mom always hated them and would pluck them out of her carton and give them to him or Mikey, depending on who begged first. 

They weave their way through the tiny tables welded to the floor, dodging kids and strollers and jackasses that pile purchases in the tiny aisles until they make it over to him. Gerard smacks their tray onto their side of the table, kicking his feet up onto the empty seat beside Brendon. They don’t hurt yet, but any chance he has to give them a rest he’ll take. He’s still got half a shift left. 

For the first few weeks after he first met Kesha, Gerard had slipped into vegetarian mood. Any introduction of meat would make him think of her definition, and that would be enough to kill his hunger completely. Luckily he’s over that, which allows him to take a huge bite of his baconator after he sprinkles salt over the opened bun. The hamburger and bacon and cheese mix like a orgasm created specifically for his tongue. Mikey doesn’t seem to be enjoying his burger nearly as much, but that’s because he bitched out and got a chicken wrap instead of artery clogging goodness.

Brendon makes him laugh about a dozen times, and after awhile Gerard starts to chew with his hand covering his mouth just in case. Mikey would punch him in the shoulder if he sprayed food on him, but Brendon’s too far away for that, and probably wouldn’t hit him anyway. 

When they’ve got about ten minutes left -Brendon’s got a half hour left, yet another piece of proof that indie shops are better than malls, better benefits- Mikey decides he’s still hungry and goes to stand in line for a Slurpee cup sized container of New York Fries. Gerard gives him change to get him another bottle of Pepsi and continues talking with Brendon. His phone vibrates with a text, and Gerard pulls it out of his pocket, figuring it’s Mikey telling him the nearest cooler is out of Pepsi. There’s really nothing else it could be, Kesha’s basically stopped contacting him since she got William and Gabe. 

It is from Mikey, but it’s not about drinks. Instead it says **u no u drgged me on ur date, rite?**

Gerard looks up from his phone. Mikey’s dancing the slow, shifting your weight from foot to foot dance of being in line. He’s facing him though, so Gerard raises an arm and flips him off.

**no, sirisly. ur on a date. brng B home after wrk. hve fun.**

Stupid text slang aside, Mikey sounds serious. Gerard decides to trust him. It’s not even a decision, really. Trusting his brother has never been a choice. “Brendon, I dunno what time you’re off, but what are you doing after work?”

“Six, and nothing interesting. Watching something on my laptop, probably.”

Oh fuck, this is harder than it should be. Gerard doesn’t know how the hell Mikey can do this so frequently. “You want to come over, or something? For privacy, or whatever?”

Brendon smiles, and it’s like a crystal bridge just willed itself into existence under him as he was on the precipice. “That sounds really great, Gerard.”

***

The last hours of work can’t fly by fast enough. Brendon’s doing his best not to act overeager or extremely gleeful. Ryan always seems to have radar for that sort of thing and Brendon really doesn’t want to hear more tirades about how evil Jon is when not everything revolves around their ended relationship. They’re still friends, even if things are still awkward between them, and Brendon’s okay with that. Ryan on the other hand, not so much. It’s hard to stay at his normal level of emotion though, knowing that he’s got a date with Gerard once his shift is over. Or at least he’s pretty sure he’s reading the signs right. It would suck if he’s wrong about this. He really doesn’t want to be wrong about this.

Ryan leaves while he’s counting down the till and Brendon tries his best not to smile too widely. When he’s finished, he locks the safe, sets the alarm code and fiddles with the front door and the gate. He waits impatiently at the crosswalk before he’s allowed to be on his way to the mall.

He finds Gerard and Mikey leaning against the sides of a beat up looking two door car when he finally makes it to the portion of the mall’s parking lot that’s nearest to the Borders where they apparently work. Gerard pops open the driver’s side door and pushes the front seat forward so he can climb in. Brendon pauses for a moment because there’s an ocean of paper coffee cups littered in a mass across the surface of the backseat, not to mention other miscellaneous things just laying about. It takes a little bit of effort, but he leans into the car and nudges some of the cups and random articles of clothing away from a portion of the seat. When he’s finished he pulls out, braces his hands around the top lip of the car’s opening and hops up to balance on the tiny edge of floor board that’s not covered in some sticky brown substance that could be coffee or something else completely. In one quick sway he pretty much swings onto the empty patch of backseat he cleared off. He’s tiny enough that it doesn’t take much work for him to tuck his legs under himself. There’s no way he’s going to put his feet on the floor board.

When he looks up again, Mikey’s already in the passenger seat and arching an eyebrow in his direction without looking away from the rear view mirror. Gerard pushes the seat back before getting in. He starts the car and then they’re off. Brendon’s pretty sure he’s smiling like a loon. It can’t be helped though. 

It’s a lot quicker getting to their house than it’s been on the bus. Of course, public transportation is less grimy, so it evens out somewhat. Gerard swears at the door for a minute straight before it finally opens. Once the three of them are inside Mikey bends to untie his shoes and Gerard slips his off. Mikey opens the closet drawer the way that teenagers in high school open their lockers; expecting imminent explosion. Sure enough, a few pairs cascade out the bottom. Mikey uses his leg as a barrier against those still wanting to come out, and Gerard hands him the various shoes on the disgusting mat so Mikey can drop them in from waist height. After they’re all in Mikey slams his body against the door and though it struggles valiantly it eventually closes. Brendon decides that if he is about to be Gerard’s boyfriend, the first thing he buys him will be a shoe rack.

Gerard leads Brendon to the couch, fingers curled in his for the few feet it takes. Brendon considers it a good sign. Mikey wanders to the back of the house, probably to his bedroom. Brendon hasn’t had a full tour, he only knows bathroom-kitchen-living room. Gerard leans in and Brendon twists on the couch to face him, grateful beyond belief that he was right. In a matter of moments he’s not going to be alone anymore.

The moment is shattered by Mikey shouting from the kitchen “anyone want orange Crush? The expiration date’s like three weeks ago, we need to finish it up.” Brendon declines and hopes against hope that Gerard will go back to what he was about to do. Instead he calls out a yes to Mikey. He drifts in the room with a coffee mug of soda and puts it on the wobbly stack of pizza boxes on the coffee table. Mikey looks different from how Brendon normally sees him in the shared house; wearing tight jeans and a shirt that emphasizes how skinny and tall he is. If Brendon didn’t like Gerard so much, he’d file away a mental photo of Mikey.

After he sets the mug down, Mikey leaves again and Brendon’s almost expecting him to come back in at any moment. When he doesn’t for at a least couple of minutes, Brendon relaxes into the couch and looks at his hands for a moment. It’s not that he’s nervous, he’s just not sure what he should do. Gerard helps him out though and scoots closer before asking him if he’s okay.

He nods and Gerard leans in and lightly kisses him. It’s something safe and Brendon can understand that. He’s fine with that. Any kissing is good kissing. He usually feels bubbly and hyper kissing so he’s not going to turn that down, especially since it’s been awhile since he’s been able to cuddle and exchange kisses with someone. To say he’s missed this would be a huge understatement.

There’s no telling how long they end up just trading kisses back and forth. It’s not like he’s collecting each minute for safe keeping. Apparently it’s been too long though, because Mikey enters the living room and asks “you’re _still_ making out? Jesus, Gee.”

Brendon isn’t much for personal space. If you care about someone their space is your space, and yours theirs. Still it’s awkward when Mikey wedges himself between the coffee table and the couch. The mug wobbles precariously before tipping over, spilling onto the back of Mikey’s calves. He doesn’t seem to notice, just kisses Gerard’s kneecap before moving up a few inches and biting hard on Gerard’s inseam. When he pulls away there’s a crescent moon of damp fabric. 

“Um?” Brendon manages. Because he wouldn’t have done this if he thought they were together. He only decided it was a possibility after Mikey went out to the bar to hook up. If Mikey’s marking his territory Brendon needs to figure out the quickest and easiest way to leave without ruining this friendship entirely.

“Relax, Bren. You keep kissing him, and I’ll blow him. You can eat the screams out of his mouth. I bet they’ll taste delicious.”

Holy shit. That shouldn’t be nearly as hot as it seems. He’s never even considered having a threesome before, it never seemed like there could be any love in it. Threesomes were for kinky people desperate to ramp things up a notch, and that’s not the kind of relationships he’s into. But there’s no question about it, Mikey’s hands tugging Gerard’s work belt open only to pull his dick out straight away is hot. 

Brendon can’t see Mikey, eyes too close to Gerard’s to see anything at all. But he can tell the moment Mikey’s lips curl around Gerard’s cock, the gasp that fills Brendon’s mouth can’t be for any other reason. He keeps kissing Gerard, his tongue steady as Gerard’s rhythm slowly breaks down. His hands run the length of Gerard’s back, shoulders, neck under the collar of his work shirt. It doesn’t matter where he’s touching, just that he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t ever want to stop. 

At some point his hand moves low enough that he can feel the sweaty spikes of Mikey’s hair. It only seems natural to curl his fingers around the nape of Mikey’s neck, every nudging movement of Mikey’s head transmitting up his arm. The rhythm is on both ends now, against his lips and his fingers, and Brendon would complete the circuit, would plunge his hand into his jeans and start jerking off, except he can’t. To do that he would have to let go of either Mikey or Gerard, and that’s not a possibility.

Gerard stiffens when he comes, throws his head back until it thunks against the drywall behind the couch and moans into the air. Mikey doesn’t pull off until Gerard’s done, and Brendon almost wants to applaud. In his history of men, only Jon was ever willing to swallow. It’s only when Mikey grabs the hem of his shirt and drags him down that Brendon realises he _didn’t_ swallow. He couldn’t have, because Brendon can taste it in his mouth as Mikey’s hands dart up the back of his shirt. He only pulls away when Brendon swallows, using what’s left of his brain function to revise his previous statement. _This_ is officially the hottest thing he’s ever done. 

“So, you’re hard, I’m hard. You want to fuck me, or me to fuck you? I’m up for anything you might want.”

“He really is,” Gerard says lazily, still stretched on the corner seat of the couch. Gerard whoring out his roommate shouldn’t be sexy, it should be degrading, but it’s not, and Brendon wonders if this could work; loving Gerard and lusting over the both of them. Hell, he could probably love Mikey too, if he let himself. Mikey’s been great too, he’s just never considered the possibility of two, and he liked Gerard first.

“I don’t care. I just want to kiss someone.” 

“Come down here,” Mikey answers, emphasizing his request by kicking out behind him. The table shudders and the edge nearest Mikey moves back a few feet. The pizza boxes avalanche off the table and Brendon looks at them for a moment. The top one has opened and a piece has landed cheese side down on the carpet, and he really should clean it up. The carpet is already disgusting, but having congealed cheese can’t possibly help it. On the other hand, his cock is aching inside his still zippered jeans, and Mikey’s slowly jacking himself. 

Brendon makes an executive decision that the pizza can wait ten minutes, and ignores it as he slides to the floor. The carpet makes a scratching noise against his jeans as he crawls into place, which carpets shouldn’t do, but he tamps the thought down and lets Mikey position him until he’s kneeling in between Gerard’s spread legs. Mikey’s hands linger on his ass as he slowly pushes his jeans and underwear down, and his dick is rubbing against the old fabric of the couch, worn smooth by age, and it feels so fucking good. 

It’s even better when Mikey punches Gerard hard in the shin getting an _ow, motherfuck_ in response before telling him to stop being a lazy asshole. It’s not really dirty talk like Devon liked, which Brendon is grateful for because he can’t pull that off without laughing, but it works. Gerard sits up before hunching over, cupping Brendon’s chin to keep his head still so he can slip his tongue between his lips.

Mikey’s fingers are pulling his cheeks apart, and for a moment Brendon tries to pull away so he can protest. He doesn’t know the guys Mikey’s been fucking, but Brendon isn’t up for a dry fuck, and he needs to make that clear before this turns ugly. Then Mikey’s cock slides into the crevasse, and he starts rocking. It’s a filthy motion, Mikey working his hips hard enough that Brendon’s rutting against the couch without a say in it. But it feels good, Mikey’s left hand on his balls making it better, Gerard biting his bottom lip making it better still.

Brendon comes first. He can’t help it, not when he’s being touched so much, and it’s been so long since he’s had someone care enough to touch him and not make it dirty like the Denny’s guy did. He groans, not sure how much is muffled by Gerard, how much is getting out into the air of the living room. His senses are overloading, they always do when he orgasms, he can’t see anything beyond white sparks, can’t taste the soda on Gerard, can’t smell the ever present fast food. All there is is Mikey at his back and his couch at his dick.

He stays there, sandwiched and panting, as Mikey ruts faster, finishing himself up. The splatter of come on his ass quickly starts to follow the pattern of gravity, oozing down his skin. Mikey pants for a moment, forehead resting against the back of Brendon’s head, then he pulls away and stands. Brendon watches, letting himself sink back into his body as Mikey heads for the couch, stepping onto the pile of awkwardly angled boxes that are in his way. They crunch under his foot, he doesn’t seem to notice. Apparently both the men of this house get lazy after orgasm.

For that matter, Brendon wouldn’t exactly be against curling on the couch and resting against one of them. But his come is dripping onto the front of his jeans, and Mikey’s onto the back, and he needs to get cleaned up first. “You got a spare set of pants?”

“Uh, why?” 

Brendon’s eyes widen. “Um. Because I’m, like, covered in come?” 

Mikey and Gerard both look at him for a second, like they’re not sure why that’s a relevant answer. Mikey shrugs first. “Yeah, all our shit is in the bedroom, go grab what you want.”

The bedroom, as in one. Which means if Brendon had been nosy and looked into the closed rooms he could have figured out they were together. But if he had, he wouldn’t have hit on Gerard, and all this would have been gone. Brendon snickers as he stands. His mom was right about nosiness being a vice, how about that?

***

Mikey is not an idiot. Mikey knows that Gerard’s shitty at picking up on people having an interest in him, in Jersey he passed up about a dozen guys and girls that Mikey knew would have jumped his bones in a heartbeat. Mikey had to bear the ‘pretend to have a girlfriend’ burden by himself. Pretending he loved someone that wasn’t Gee had been impossible at first, but he’d gotten better with it with time. 

This is not that. All those times were Gerard being completely oblivious to the signals of others. In the three days since they hooked up Gerard’s been ignoring Brendon’s texts. He didn’t even look at him during S. K. Anon. Mikey _knows_ what it is, and he gives Gerard two more days to mention it. When Gerard doesn’t, he does.

“You love Brendon and it’s freaking you out because you think you have to choose, and you choose me. Which means you need to avoid him completely but you feel like a dick. Yes or yes?”

Gerard shrugs. Mikey knows that too. That’s older brother code for ‘I won’t admit my younger brother is brilliant and right’. “You’re an idiot. You’ve _never_ made me choose. Why would I make you?”

“It’s different from you. I don’t want to go to a bar and-”

“Gee, if you went to a bar I’d slice the bartender from head to toe, S. K. Anon or not.” It’s the truth. Technically it would be Gerard’s choice, but Mikey knows that he would go straight for the person serving his brother.

“Mikey, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying I don’t want to go out and hook up with him. I-”

“You’re honestly telling me that if I fell in love with someone else you’d prevent me from seeing them? Hooking up works for me, but I’ve never expected it to work for you. But you and Brendon could work.” Mikey shrugs. “It’s not like I hate the guy. Brendon’s cool. I’d have sex with him again. You should see if he wants to live with us.”

“What? Mikey, what?”

“He’s here half the week anyway, and if you start dating or whatever he’ll be over more often. Might as well save the time and bus fare, right? _I’m_ going to go have a shower. _You_ call him and tell him to pack up his clothes and stuff.” Mikey leans in for a quick kiss before leaving the room. There’s a fifty-fifty chance Gerard will actually call when he’s showering, but if he doesn’t Mikey’s not going to drop it. Gerard will do what makes him happy, even if Mikey has to make sure it happens.

***

The tv chitters in the background and Gerard fishes for the remote to mute it. Mikey’s right, not that he’s going to tell him that. Mikey already knows anyways, so it would just be bringing up something they don’t really need to talk about. There’s only so many times he can hear ‘of course I’m right’ before it gets boring and irritating.

Mikey had oh so subtly set his cell phone on the coffee table before leaving to go take his shower. Gerard knows his phone won’t bite him, yet for some reason he can’t stop staring at it. What the hell does he say anyways? _Hi, come live with us?_ or something else just as epically cheesy and wrong? 

It’s an understatement to say that he’s not especially good at shit like this. The only person he’s ever wanted to live with is right here with him. It’s not like he’s got loads of experience with this. But, thinking about it, Gerard’s not actually against Brendon being around more often if he wants to be. Mikey being all for it means he can’t really ignore it. If he does, he’ll never hear the end of it.

That doesn’t mean he has any earthly clue how to go about this. Logically he knows the mechanics of calling. It’s just everything else he’s pretty much drawing a blank on. He stares at the cracked screen of his phone and shrugs his shoulder before going for it. It can’t be too hard right? People do this sort of thing all the time.

The only problem ends up being that Brendon doesn’t answer when he calls. Gerard didn’t even think about that being an option. He’s stuck just listening to this really peppy ring back tone cycle through three times before the drone sounding voice mail lady asks him to leave a message. He hangs up and stares at his phone again.

“You didn’t call did you?”

When Gerard looks up, Mikey’s standing near the couch in only a pair of jeans. It’s mildly distracting. 

“Such rousing support and faith is appreciated. I called. He didn’t answer.”

He maybe gets a tiny bit dramatic with an arm flail when he says the last bit. Mikey for his part just stares at him unimpressed.

“And you left a message, right?”

Gerard doesn’t say anything. What was he supposed to do? Ramble at the voice recording awkwardly for ages?

“Call back and leave a message. Seriously, messages are your friend.”

A tiny cartoon bunny hops across the tv screen. Gerard’s not stalling. Or at least that’s what he’s telling himself, the bunny’s very distracting. Mikey throws a dirty sock at him and Gerard sighs. He punches redial and waits for the automated voice to ask him if he wants to leave a message before just starting to ramble. 

“So ummm...I’ve been a dick and shouldn’t have. Like epic amounts of Lando in Cloud City levels of dickishness. But Lando made up for it and hopefully I can too. Okay, Lando isn’t a good comparison because he was pretty much forced into it. He still came through though with helping Leia get Han back and the whole Endor thing. I’m hoping you can be like Han and not hold it against me. I’m kind of bad at this. Would you like to move in with me and Mikey?”

Gerard pauses to breath and hits the end button before he starts talking about Batman or any slew of comic book characters and their respective levels of fail. The last thing he needs to mention is Peter Parker’s inability to hold on to Mary Jane Watson. 

Mikey sits down and kisses him. Gerard’s pretty sure he drops his phone somewhere. It doesn’t really matter. He’s pretty sure it can withstand anything, crack in the screen or not.

***

Normally Brendon likes when Ryan is happy. Sometimes, though, it makes him want to punch him in the face. To prevent the movement, Brendon pinches the bridge of his nose. “I don’t think-”

“What, so you _don’t_ want to make six hundred dollars today?”

“That happened _once_ , Ryan. Once.” Every other time Ryan’s used reclaimed household items for fabric the article has sold for a normal amount of money. Sometimes they only sell because Brendon has to mark the item down three times.

“It will happen again. It’s a brilliant dress.”

“Ryan, that is a shower curtain.”

Ryan blinks, which is a definite statement, meaning more than Gerard’s arm flailing ever does. “It has a fish motif, and yesterday you took a picture of a child’s toy discarded in a puddle. It’s the fleetingness of vibrancy, Brendon. How can you not see that? You don’t have a plebeian brain.”

“It’s a great concept, but it can’t be washed. Mold, Ryan. You can’t try to sell something that will make people sick.”

“They can use Tilex.” Brendon’s almost impressed with how logical and problem solving that answer is. It’s still not enough to settle the urge to headbash against the wall. Ryan continues “make sure you add a ‘how to take care’ note to the shipping box.”

Brendon should be happy hearing the inference that Ryan’s already set up a bidding war on the website. Instead he silently curses the people that encourage his best friend’s madness. The more Ryan thinks he can sell shit like plastic curtain dresses, the more he’ll make. “I hate your face, just so you know.”

“Here’s money for the both of us. Go get me a Klondike bar, and whatever you want.”

“You can’t buy me off with ice cream, Ryan Ross.” It’s a lie, they both know it. Brendon takes the bill from Ryan’s hand and heads for the nearest Sev. 

When he gets back his neglected phone is vibrating on the counter. Brendon types in the code needed to retrieve his voice mail. He knows even before the message starts that it’s from Gerard because the voice mail lady mechanically drolls out Gerard’s number. It makes him pause because what if Gerard’s finally decided to tell him that this won’t work? 

Brendon’s been doing his best to not obsess over the fact that Gerard’s pretty much been ignoring him. It’s not the first time he’s had to cool his heels for days before knowing how things were going to turn out. The worry that likes to nestle in his stomach when this tends to happen isn’t fun but he’s used to it by now.

He doesn’t have to worry though, because Gerard’s apologizing and Brendon’s trying his best not to giggle. Only Gerard would say sorry by mentioning Star Wars. It’s really pretty much par for the course with him and Brendon’s okay with that. He’s not a fanboy of Star Wars but it’s not a bad slice of sci-fi either. He’s pretty sure Gerard’s talking about The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. He could be wrong, but he doesn’t think he is, especially when Gerard starts to ramble about his analogy.

He almost misses the last bit of the message because Ryan shows up at his side. Brendon’s not sure how he keeps from breaking out in a huge smile. Gerard, and Mikey for that matter, want him to move in. He wasn’t exactly expecting that but it’s not like he’s going to say no.

Ryan scowls. “Was that Jon? Is he harassing you like Phil did? I know you don’t like restraining orders but seriously, Bren-”

“Oh my God, no, it’s not Jon.”

“If he’s leaving you stalkery messages you need to do something. Even if you don’t get the cops involved, you should do _something_. You should just punch him in the face. Seriously. I would, but I’m sewing decorative stitches and I need my fingers pristine.”

“It wasn’t Jon.”

“I could get Spencer to punch him? Spencer’s just working at Walmart, he doesn’t need his hands.”


	5. Chapter 5

For the most part, Mikey likes having Brendon in their house. It’s fun, trying to make two people orgasm at the same time. He has poor taste in music and movies, but it’s interesting trying to educate him on all that he’s missing out on. Most importantly, Gerard loves Brendon. It’s not quite the same as what they have, and he knows it can never be, and he’s happy for it. If Brendon was everything Mikey was to Gerard, then he couldn’t be around. But Mikey’s not being replaced, he’s being added to, and that’s fine. Good, even.

The only thing that’s awkward is how obsessively clean Brendon is. He’s like thirty Stepford wives crammed into one five foot eight grinning brunet package. It’s sort of ridiculous. Normal people like him and Gee don’t clean half as often. At the same time, he doesn’t want to tell Brendon to stop. It’s probably a coping mechanism. Since he’s quit he’s been reading a lot more comics, when Gerard quit he started drawing even more. Brendon’s just started not killing, if he has to do weird shit like wash all the mugs than Mikey’s not going to try prevent it. Try and convert it into healthier behaviour, maybe.

Early yesterday morning he woke up to Brendon trying his best to wash out the coffee maker. The posted and reposted bus schedule was rewritten on a clean sheet of paper and was hanging from the refrigerator door. The magnets holding it up were cheerful little smiley faces. Mikey’s pretty sure by Thursday all of the magnets will have vampire fangs and blood dripping from gashes and wounds. It’ll be an improvement to the sunny way the magnets look at the moment. Mikey’s still not sure why Brendon needed to clean out the coffee maker but as long as there’s still coffee he’s not going to pay any attention to it. However it had been too early so he’d dragged Brendon back to the bedroom. If he hadn’t, there’s no telling what the kitchen would have looked like by the time he and Gee had finally gotten up for the day. 

This morning he’d woken up to fresh coffee that tasted slightly funny but not bad enough for him to pass it up. He’s not going to go to work without having at least one cup of coffee before hand. That place is hell enough as it is when he’s got several cups down. There’s no way he’s going to try it without some caffeine swimming around in his blood stream.

Brendon’s been living with them for two days, and both days they’ve met at the food court for a lunch date. Mikey reaches across the table and snags one of his curly fries. They taste different than Gee’s, as Gerard likes to smother his in enough salt to kill a horse. He can’t really mind when Brendon snags one of his nuggets in retaliation.

“So this is pretty much my new favourite routine.” Gerard smiles at Brendon’s words, pickle smeared over his teeth. Mikey tilts his head to acknowledge his agreement. “But, uh, just keep a look out for a tall skinny guy?”

“Today, or like, all the time?” Mikey questions.

“All the time, I guess. He’ll usually be in a vest and dark jeans. Unless it’s a scarf. He doesn’t like wearing scarves and vests at the same time, says over accessorising is very Hollywood, and Hollywood is very nineteen seventies, and well the comparison list goes on forever, until over accessorising is like an elephant or something.” Brendon shakes his head and refocuses, taking a bite of his hamburger first. “But yeah, keep an eye out, ‘kay?”

“Who’s this guy you want to avoid? Is he a bad guy?”

“Dastardly, even?” Mikey snips. He’s Gerard’s younger brother, it’s practically his career to take the wind out of his sails. 

“Shut the fuck up. I’m just saying if he’s someone we have to take care of. Well. We won’t, because we’re not like that anymore, all of us are stronger than that. But we could call mall security or something.”

“No, he’s not like that. Ryan’s just... um. Sort of really hard to describe him, actually. But I’ve had some shitty boyfriends in the past-”

“You don’t have to talk about that if you don’t feel comfortable!” Gerard interrupts. 

“Yeah, no, it’s fine.” Mikey still reaches across the table and grabs his hand. It’s gotta suck to actually love someone and have them turn into a complete asshat. “I’m just saying, he’s like, dealt with all my boyfriends and post-boyfriend issues, and. Well. He’s currently very anti-me having a boyfriend. So it would be better if-”

“We’re not making out with you if he comes for a lunch run. Makes sense.”

“It’s not like I’m ashamed of you or anything, it’s just-”

“Bren, it’s cool. We know what shame is, this isn’t that. It’s cool.” When he escaped Jersey he promised he’d never let himself or Gerard feel any shame about any love they had inside them. But Mikey’s fine with staying a secret from Brendon’s best friend. Not everything needs to be a show.

“And in a complete change of topic so I don’t feel like the shitty ass boyfriend, don’t wait for me after work.”

Mikey rolls his eyes. Seriously, both of his boyfriends are completely incapable of self-assurance. “You’re not, and why not? You gonna go hang out with him?”

“No. I need to get stuff for the house.”

“Uh, okay?” Gerard answers for the both of them. Mikey is pretty sure they don’t need anything, but whatever. Gerard panicked immediately after hanging up and started Googling tips for having a boyfriend or girlfriend move in with you. Most of the articles he found talked about the new person asserting their dominance by buying their favourite brand of toilet paper, or putting their posters up. If Brendon’s got to get a CD rack instead of having them in piles beside the tv to make him feel like it’s his house too, then that’s fine.

***

After they get in Gerard heads for the bedroom to grab them both clothes. There are only a few shirts to pick from, closet is almost bare. Gerard’s not entirely sure why Brendon decided to do so many loads of laundry, but almost everything they own is in the spare room. He tosses a pair of jeans and a shirt at Mikey once he’s back in the hall. His brother is naked except for boxers, and scrounging for food. The fridge is full but Gerard expects it won’t stay that way for long; Brendon said something about it being his next project. Gerard only hopes that he hasn’t accidentally fallen in love with a health nut. Tofu is not his choice of food.

Fully dressed they retreat to the living room, Mikey stretching out on the couch, Gerard crosslegged on the floor. He needs more room to sort through his Magic cards and build a new deck, and Mikey needs to sooth the ache in his legs from having to haul shit around all day. Tuesdays always suck for Mikey. The only benefit is he’s usually able to take a few clearance section books home as they make room for the new ones.

Hamletback Goliath is the centre of it all. If he can get four out and combine that with a token producing card like Verdant Force it’ll get more and more powerful with each turn. Combine that with something with shroud or trample and he’s set. Shroud’s probably more important, Mikey likes to play destroy creature cards a lot. 

“You think Brendon will want to play?”

“What?” Mikey looks around the side of his hardcover. “Oh. Um, I dunno. He’s the kind of guy that’ll do anything for his boyfriend. Could tell that before the Ryan thing at lunch. So he’ll learn if he knows you want him to. If he likes it is a completely different question.”

That much is true. Brendon will play if he asks. Gerard just doesn’t want to be a asshole boyfriend. Or even worse, a trigger. It’s different, with Brendon. He and Mikey went for opportunistic victims, but Brendon killed people he used to love. Gerard’s not scared of him, if worse came to worst Mikey could take him easily. It’s just the idea that being the reason Brendon would want to start again really sucks.

“I’m going to build him a deck, a easy one. He can always say fuck off, right?”

“He could. He won’t, but he could.” Gerard can tell without looking over that Mikey’s not looking up from his book, already bored with the conversation.

He’s less bored when Gerard twists and starts sucking a hickey onto his ankle. The skin is sensitive there, it’ll probably hurt like a bitch. But Mikey likes that sometimes. He can make Brendon a deck later, after he talks to him about what the five colours mean, their personalities and general strategies. He’s pretty sure Brendon wouldn’t want a black deck, but he can’t know for sure until they discuss it. He _can_ be sure any minute now Mikey will be writhing.

Sure enough, Mikey uses his free foot to lightly kick Gerard in the head. “That’s the best place you could think of to suck?”

“Everything else I’d want to is covered,” Gerard replies, mock-innocently.

“You lazy fucker!” Mikey doesn’t seem too perturbed though, just stands up and efficiently removes his jeans. The moment he’s sitting down again Gerard leans forward and begins to slowly nip at his thigh. It a teasing thing to do but it’s fun and Mikey’ll either let him go his own pace or help him along. Both options have their appeal and Gerard’s not really sure which one he’d prefer so he’ll just go with the flow for the moment, see where it takes them.

Mikey doesn’t push him to go faster and eventually Gerard’s proud enough of the bruises he’s made that he licks them once each before transferring his attention to Mikey’s dick. He’s still going slow, Mikey’s fingers curved into his shoulders when the front door opens and shuts in quick succession. 

Gerard doesn’t stop because the only other person with a key is Brendon and it’s not like witnessing a blow job is going to make him faint. There’s the shuffling of feet and Brendon sets something down on the couch next to them, the crinkle and rustle of plastic a dead give away that he’s placed something on the empty cushion. 

“There’s some plates I bought that need to be put up, but I’ll be right back.”

Gerard pulls away enough to watch Brendon go into the kitchen and Mikey makes this scoffing inquiring noise.

“We needed plates?”

Gerard shrugs before leaning back in to finish up what he started. If Brendon thinks they need plates then they can sit in the cabinets and collect dust when they don’t use them. They’re not going to bother anything, so it doesn’t matter. 

Brendon shouts from the kitchen “wait, why are the insides of your cupboards grimy? When was the last time you washed them down?”

Gerard glances up at Mikey, who seems too occupied biting his wrist to reply. He gives a slow lick to the underside as he slides off so he can answer that they’ve never washed their cupboards, who the fuck _washes_ the inside of a _cupboard_? It would be like vacuuming a closet or dusting, a pointless waste of time. Of course, that’s the moment Mikey’s body gives in and he comes, spattering a bit over his forehead, mostly in his hair.

“Dude, you fucking suck. Now I have to shower.” If he doesn’t his hair will dry into clumps and flake like dandruff, he knows from experience. 

“Whatever, fuck.” Mikey pushes his hand into Brendon’s bag and comes out with a pair of socks. Gerard holds steady as his brother mops him clean. “See, you’re fine now. You want me to blow you?”

He can hear the tap turning on in the kitchen, he figures Brendon’s probably obsessively cleaning. Rather than answer he crawls onto Mikey’s lap. He’s not as into biting as Mikey is, but he’s willing to have stretched collars on every shirt so Mikey can get better access if that’s what it takes to make him jerk him hard and fast.

He’s still straddling his brother when Brendon comes in, though he’s been on long enough that any moment Mikey’s gonna push him off and demand personal space. Gerard doesn’t hear him as much as see him in his periphery. Brendon’s making dramatic hand gestures like he’s got something really important to say so Gerard twists to look at him properly.

“Those were brand new!”

It’s Mikey that figures out what the hell he’s talking about, Gerard’s completely lost. “You’re supposed to wipe off on socks. Or were you never a teenager?”

“The foot shaped cardboard is still in them! You use _dirty_ socks! Or tissues!”

Gerard can only laugh. “Does this look like the kind of upperclass house that has Kleenex?” Seriously. It’s not that real men use their sleeves, because gender has nothing to do with it. It’s just a waste of money, when a sleeve soaks it up just as well. 

“There were tissues in the bag! An entire box! It had a bamboo pattern! It matches your unicorns in war time camouflage bathroom!”

Brendon’s pointing at the plastic bag, and Gerard’s not sure what to do. He’s never met someone that cares about Kleenex so much. Luckily Mikey knows the best thing to say. “Well, you could bitch at us more, if you want, I guess. But we’ve both come and you haven’t, so. It’s like, not fair. At least that’s my opinion. Gee?”

“I could suck you off, Bren? My mouth’s still warm from Mikey.” Gerard smiles as Brendon walks the rest of the way into the room and sits beside Mikey, relocating the bag to the floor. Fight officially averted, thank god. It would suck if their first argument was about tissues.

***

Brendon blinks and the world in front of him swims. Trees shift before cracking and falling all around him. Voices tangle in his hair, twisting enough in their fight to get him to listen to their venomous phrases that tiny drops of blood crawl their way into his hairline. 

The urge to run is pressing against his rib cage but the trees have him caged in. Branches creak as they snap off into withered hands and they start tugging at the hem of his jeans. Panic slams into him and he scrambles inch by slow inch over the ever growing width of the fallen trees. 

Words drip into his ears the moment he’s at the top of the wooden wall, branch hands trying to scurry after him. 

“Not good enough, never good enough.”

“You try too hard, and it shows.”

“Why would you deserve love?”

He shakes his head to fling the letters apart from their compositions and the wall topples before crumbling into sand. He lands hard and spits out bright red onto the brown-grey sand from where he’s bitten into his lip. Rolling over and slipping up to his knees, he pants for a second.

The sound of rustling draws his attention to the murky shoreline. In a row, standing in the ebb and flow of a rusty sea are what must be a hundred gulls. They’re all staring at him, beady eyes blacker than the darkest night. One squawks something remarkably like ‘Mine’ before all of them chime in. 

In an instant, they start for him, tugging at his clothing and snapping at his fingers. ‘Mine’ echoes through the air over and over again. He can’t get away and they won’t stop.

With a gasp, Brendon shudders and blinks. He’s not on the beach, he’s in bed. It was just a nightmare, one he’s had a variation of before. That doesn’t mean he’s not wired awake now while also being so bone tired that it’s ridiculous. There’s no way he’ll be able to sleep again right away. He rolls onto his side to press his face against Mikey’s shoulder. The bed is a king, but Mikey is pressed tight against Gerard, and Brendon feels slightly better breathing hotly onto Mikey’s skin. 

He could wake them up and share, have his boyfriends try and soothe him. Brendon closes his eyes and imagines how it might go. Gerard might sit up and sketch out the setting and characters of his dream. He might turn it into a panel, then a story that inevitably ended up with him coming out the victor. Mikey might distract him with sex, fingers slickly pressing into his ass, not even looking to fuck him, just liquefy his brain with arousal and frustration.

He won’t though, he already knows he won’t even get as far as putting his hand on Mikey’s side to shake him awake. None of his other boyfriends ever cared about his dreams or nightmares. Well, aside from Phil, who commanded Brendon write them down so he could self-publish. Phil had a thing about thinking everything Brendon did was pure gold. Even Jon would drift off when he started to talk about a dream he’d just had. 

It’s not that Brendon thinks Mikey and Gerard would do the same. Mikey, maybe, but not Gerard. The problem lies in that to stay with them, they need to keep thinking he’s an ex-serial killer. Otherwise everything they have is based on a lie. Brendon can’t afford the possibility that finding out he lied will drive them away, not when they’re the best people he’s ever met. And as far as he knows, serial killers don’t have nightmares.

So instead he draws back the blanket smoothly, making sure it’s tucked down Mikey’s side so there’s no draft. He grabs a hoodie at random from their closet and pulls it on before adjusting his boxers. In the day it would be smelly, just another thing he needed to wash. At quarter after three it smells just enough like Gerard to make him feel protected.

He stumbles into the living room. Strips of light filter in through the window from the nearby outside street lamp. Maybe he can find something on television that will make him forget. He finds the remote under the coffee table and when he bends to pick it up his fingers graze the carpet. Mentally he adjusts his list of things to remember to do to include finding a way to steam clean the carpet. It needs a good wash to make it happy.

Standing, Brendon presses the power button and quickly hits the volume down key several times. It would suck if he woke Mikey and Gerard up now after deciding not to. The moment he catches a glimpse of the tv screen, he almost drops the remote. Of course he forgot that the tv had been turned to the Chiller channel the last time it was on. It means he’s graced with the picture of a woman trapped in a phone booth while birds pelt themselves against the glass.

The last thing he needs right now is movies about birds attacking people. His fingers shake a little when he hits the channel up button about fifty times to get the movie to Just. Go. Away. It takes several seconds of lag before the channel catches up with the change and Brendon calms because Toon Disney never has anything harmful at this or any other hour. But the moment it comes back from commercial, he hits the power button. One of the few times he’s not up for Finding Nemo and they’re showing it, and the scene with the seagulls at that. He can’t deal with this right now. 

He gently sets the remote down on the edge of the coffee table and decides to go in the kitchen for a glass of water. The moment his bare feet touch the tiles they start to stick. Logically he knew he’d need to mop the kitchen floor soon enough, but right now it just makes him wince and wish he had a mop. He can remedy that though, all he needs is two towels and a sink full of hot water mixed with some of the kitchen cleaner he hid under the sink yesterday.

He’s going to be tired at work tomorrow, and if he doesn’t hide it carefully Ryan will assume things. Most likely Jon based things, and if not it’ll still be boyfriend based. He’s starting to wonder why Brendon’s leaving every lunch hour, and it’s only going to get worse. But television is clearly his enemy right now, he can’t wake up his boyfriends, and at best texting Ryan would end up with him telling him useless advice like to read a book. At worst Ryan would offer to come over to the apartment, and show up even after Brendon told him not to. Ryan attempting to break into his empty apartment would be a nightmare in itself. No, the best solution is scrubbing the floor by moonlight.

***

It’s the first time they’re going to S K Anon as a triad. Really, it’s not that much different than going with just Gerard. His brother is still driver, like always, Mikey knows better than to try and claim the spot and he doesn’t know if Brendon even has a licence. The music is still blaring loudly, enough to fill the tiny car. And the destination, of course, is still the same.

There are a few different bits to it. When Gerard finishes his coffee and Mikey finishes his Slurpee and both are tossed to the floor under Mikey’s feet, Brendon makes an indignant noise. The next red light Gerard stops for Brendon’s unbuckling his belt and heaving himself over the tiny armrest to snatch both cups up. The momentum of the car starting again makes him fall heavily back into his seat, but a moment later the left window is whirring down and Brendon chucks both plastic and cardboard out the open space.

“Littering?” Gerard asks. His eyebrows are probably raised, but between his massive fucking sunglasses and black hair in his face Mikey can’t tell.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Brendon says. His tone is weird, something new. Mikey takes a minute to place it as sarcasm. “I forgot that’s _wrong_.”

Aside from the one instance of Brendon getting snarky -Mikey’s never seen it before but he hope it continues, a sassy Brendon could prove to be interesting- the drive to the deserted community is a normal occasion. When they crash in their respective lawn chairs Mikey wants to start the group mentioning their new boy, but Ryland raises two fingers of his hand and says he really needs to talk. He’s a nice guy, he lets Ryland go first.

“It’s stupid but the last two days I’ve had trouble trying to even watch tv. You’d think a movie about dinosaurs eating people wouldn’t make me want to go out and find someone to cut their heart out but it’s not like I’ve actually seen the movie from the beginning in years. Fucking Alan Grant trying to scare a kid by mentioning raptor hunting habits. I had to shut the set off not even fifteen minutes in. And hell, yesterday was an Alien marathon. There’s no way I was going to make it through the chest popping scene without something bad happening. It shouldn’t matter, but it’s lame and freaky not being able to have that outlet.” 

“Fuck that man, it’s not stupid. Me and William have a love hate relationship with Mythbusters because half the time it’s badass with building lead balloons or coffee creamer flame throwers, and then they do something like see what sort of damage would happen to a carved jello brain if you hit a skull composite with a wine bottle. And it’s like _seriously_? Why you gotta hate on me, Jamie and Adam?”

“It’s more like Gabe’s got a love hate relationship, and I’m the one that has to distract him when they decide to beat the everloving fuck out of Buster. But no man, you’re not the only one that has tv triggers.”

Kesha frowns, pulling her legs closer to her body. “On CSI, the one that had the scrumptious black guy until he did too many drugs and they killed him off? They had that woman that ate yummy milkshakes. Except they did it all damn _wrong_ , and they made her ugly. It was a bad episode. Stupid CSI.”

“Maybe just download a shit-ton of stuff, and watch them? If you have a hundred gigs of shows it’s almost like watching tv,” Mikey suggests.

“Hell, you could totally hook up your computer to your television. At the Alexes they have their computer like that. They say it’s not for high def porn, but yeah right. Who doesn’t want a cunt stretched open over fifty inches?”

Mikey winces slightly, and sure enough a moment later Gerard frowns and starts up “Cash, a lot of women find that word offensive.”

“Kesha, you care if I say cunt?”

She smirks and drapes a leg over one of the armrests, short dress riding up obscenely. “You eat mine and I’ll eat something of yours, lover.”

Cash shakes his head, which is probably wise. Kesha pouts for a moment, until William slides his hand up the underside of her calf. Mikey considers the slaughter neatly avoided, and then Cash opens his damn month again. “Soooo. It looks like the only girl with her panties in a bunch is you, Waydog.”

Gerard starts up with how calling someone a girl isn’t an diss, there’s nothing offensive about being called the opposite gender, and Kesha comments loudly that Gerard must be the only one, because she’s not wearing any, and Ryland replies that yeah, he’s sitting across from her and he can confirm that. Mikey just shifts in his seat and watches the drama. S K Anon can be really rather interesting at times.

It’s when Gabe checks his iPhone and says _ohhhh, shit_ that Mikey knows the craziness is about to spiral into overdrive. He’s not sure how he knows, he just does. Sort of like how he knew exactly which girl in a denim skirt to take to the planned community with him. It’s an instinctual thing. And it looks like he’s not the only one with the same instincts. The room hushes as William demands “what!”

“Apparently there’s a world of trouble going down in Mobile. CNN news feed says there’s a hostage situation at the BP office there.”

Well, shit. Mikey’s never met Andy but he’s pretty sure everyone here, except Brendon, is thinking the same thing. There’s no one else who could possibly be cracked enough to decide something like this is a good idea. And since Andy’s not here then Mikey’s going to take a not so wild shot in the dark and say he’s there causing trouble.

“We should probably find someplace to watch this.” 

It’s Ryland who speaks up and that sounds like a good enough idea that everyone seems to agree. 

“My ‘rents wouldn’t understand a swarm, sorry. The Alexes, yeah, but not a whole crew.”

Mikey doesn’t particularly want to suggest their house. It’s his and Gerard’s. Well, and Brendon’s too, now. But he doesn’t want a handful of people he only hangs out with once a week tromping through. It would be just like Cash to be a nosy fucker and go look into Gerard’s art room. Luckily Gabe steps up, giving directions on how to get to his and William’s before Gerard or Brendon gets a guilt complex and offers. They all leave the community centre as a large group, people heading for their cars, Ryland in the rear, lawn chairs scraping and squealing against the concrete as he drags them along. Mikey takes a long look at the centre. He’s got a feeling he might not be seeing this place again.

***

Gabe’s directions aren’t hard to follow and eventually Gerard’s pulling into the parking lot of a decent looking apartment complex. He finds an empty spot close to a giant SUV and parks. Getting out of the car, he pockets his keys and watches as everyone else gets out of their vehicles. No one’s parked near each other, which is understandable. 

The car door barely makes a noise when Brendon climbs out of the back seat and shuts the door behind him. Mikey’s already leaning against the passenger side of the car. Gerard’s not exactly sure what they’re all waiting for, just standing around in the parking lot while everyone else is already on their way to William and Gabe’s place.

Gerard’s not sure he wants to know what’s going on near the Gulf Coast. But he needs to, so he heads in the direction of the front lobby’s doors. Mikey catches up quickly and Brendon’s right behind them. The elevator takes them to the third floor with no problems and in about a minute Gerard’s standing in front of a plain white door. He honestly never expected Gabe to have such a bland color for a front door, something bright and neon maybe, but not this boring shade of egg shell white. He shrugs and knocks instead of trying the handle.

William answers the door and they file in. The first thing Gerard notices is the wall directly in his line of sight. It’s painted a watery shade of neon blue with a giant swath of bright, lemon yellow cutting through at a diagonal angle. Now that’s more like it. On their way to the main part of the living room they pass a floor lamp that’s casting a funky shadow on the floor. Gerard stops to stare at the shadow because it looks something like a cross between the Creature From the Black Lagoon and a gorilla, it’s fascinating.

Gabe turns on the television with an almost reluctance. It’s on nearly full blast on BPM, one of the radio channels that you can find on DirecTV. Gerard can appreciate the rock and metal channels, but he’s pretty sure this is a David Geutta and Black Eyed Peas mashup, and he really gets enough of that shit at work. William snatches the remote out of his hand and keys in the proper channel while lowering the volume until it’s not vibrating the glass around them.

It’s Anderson Cooper discussing the Breaking News, of course. Whenever shit goes down it’s _always_ Anderson Cooper. Either he’s been updated since they left the community centre or Gabe’s app doesn’t give full details, because there’s a lot more proof that it’s Andy than they had at S K Anon. For one, he apparently told the reporter he first called that if any Fox News car showed up everyone would die immediately.

More specifically damning, they roll a clip they’ve obviously shown a dozen times before, the way all footage repeats on Breaking News. It’s brief, and surprisingly grainy considering it’s a multi-billion dollar corporation. But then expecting BP to maintain their own buildings and security when they can’t even maintain drill rigs is a bit ridiculous. It’s a kinky haired redhead walking into the building, green backpack slung across his back. Gerard knows that backpack, it’s a decade old, with lyrics from Andy’s first, failed band scrawled all over it. Andy doesn’t throw away things, even things that have painful memories attached, not if they’re in usable condition. Then, of course, there’s the common sense stuff. It’s a bomb threat. Andy knows everything about bombs, different remote detonation techniques, what creates what explosion radius. And it’s BP, the reason he started up again. Gerard was expecting gas stations exploding, they all were. He carefully didn’t Google for information when a few came up on the news, just in case. 

Behavioural analysts would probably consider this Andy’s devolving. There’s no coming back from this. It’s going to end up in a stand-off, and it’s not like Andy has guns. He might have the chance to lob a single pipe bomb at the cluster of police and SWAT team before they riddle him with bullets. Gerard sees it differently though. He knows he’s not the only one in the room. This is Andy taking a stand, making a decision about what’s more important to him, hiding or doing what needs to be done. Gerard can hardly fault him for it.

The awed silence breaks with Kesha’s phone trilling a bit of Lady Gaga. “Unknown number. Says sometimes you need to be the volcano. Aw, shit, Andy. Fucking shit. We like, used to have this convo, when he’d get mad. I’d try to distract him, but if it didn’t work I’d remind him that for every baddie that pollutes a volcano takes out a hundred people. Shit, he’s gonna do something, I know it.”

Cash and Ryland seem almost calm, both perched on either fat arm of a plush armchair. Cash is tapping out a rhythm on his thigh, but he does that whenever he gets bored. William, Gabe and Kesha are standing, both of them distressed and curled into Gabe, faces buried. Gerard tries not to think about what’ll happen if police find out Kesha’s the last person he texted before suicide by cop. He bets they can’t stop thinking about it. Their trio is almost as tight as his is, from what he knows about their home lives.

Mikey and Brendon are crashed out beside him on the couch. Both are staring at the tv, hardly blinking. Gerard thinks he knows what they’re thinking, at least he knows what Mikey is thinking. He tries to ignore the thoughts in the back of his head, concentrating on the television and the silver-white of Anderson’s hair. He only looks away when Gabe bursts out “motherfucker!”

Gabe’s upper arm is bleeding sluggishly. Beyond him Kesha’s got a lipstick circle of blood. “Sorry. Stress eater.”

“Yeah, well. Don’t do it again, for fucksakes. I’m a stress bludgeoner, so.”

CNN cuts back to live coverage again after talking to one of their in house psychological experts. All of the camera crews in the area have the place lit up. Yet suddenly to the far left of the screen there’s a quick flash of light before the noise catches up to it and the camera’s recording device distorts and squeals as the sound of an explosion rips through everything.

The camera shakes and people are screaming. It’s mass chaos and through the tremors the camera doesn’t fuzz out and people are running, trying to back as far away as possible from where they were not even moments before. Another explosion detonates and debris makes an odd clunking sound when it falls near the camera still filming. After about a minute of that CNN pulls back to the in studio staff. Either the live feed went black or they don’t want to show anything else while it’s happening.

The apartment is silent. 

It’s Cash that breaks it. “Anyone else think that was really fucking badass?”

“What?”

“What what? Cummy Mcgee took a fucking stand on his principles. I defy any of you to say you haven’t thought about a spree at one point. At least he didn’t pussy out and back down to the cops.”

Gerard mentions that using the phrase ‘pussying out’ to mean being a coward is rude and inaccurate, but no one seems to notice, except for Mikey who pats his leg. 

“Cummy was fucking badass. And he’s got a fucking point, too. Not about BP, or whatever. Like I give a fucking shit about oil. It runs the cars I jack, what the fuck more do I need to know? But the not being a bitch thing. Smart motherfucking man.”

“Andy knew we’re all going to die regardless. Everyone’s going to wither, internal systems breaking down, becoming riddled with weakness. Andy decided to make his death mean something.” Gerard recognises that talk. That’s Ryland’s triggers blasting all over the place, anything about organs is. 

“He really does have a point. Past tense, rather. Did. At some point you have to decide what kind of man you are.” William’s hand is on his jaw, darting to stroke down his hair before landing on his collarbone. That too is a S K Anon member breaking down in front of them. 

It’s Kesha who underlines the reality of what’s happening though. “Imma go snatch me some dinner. Throw all the vegetarian shit out of my fuckin’ fridge. I’m not a fuckin’ rabbit, and it’s about time I realised that.” She stand on her tiptoes to kiss William’s cheek, then bites playfully millimeteres away from his jawbone. “Don’t wait up, my lovelies. The whole world’s, like, a buffet, who knows how long it’ll take my plate to fill.”

After that everyone makes their excuses to leave. Gerard wants to say ‘see you next week’, but he knows it’s not true. There’s no sense in attempting to delude anyone, including himself.

***

Street lights slowly begin to flicker on as they drive past them. Brendon’s staring out the back window watching pools of light click on behind them because he’s not sure he’s able to sit facing the front right now without getting twitchy. Mikey and Gerard aren’t really paying him much attention at the moment anyway, too caught up in talking about how Andy was right about things. 

His thoughts are loud in his head and Brendon wants to sigh but he can’t. He doesn’t need Mikey and Gerard thinking he disagrees with them. Gerard matters a lot to him and Mikey’s not far behind in those regards either. Brendon’s not sure he could bare losing them after finally being here with them. If they decide to start killing again the way the rest of group seems to be spiraling towards then he’s not going to stand in their way and try to stop them.

Really, the only choice he has to make is how far is he willing to go to stay with them. Part of him isn’t exactly happy about that but everyone does things they’re not partial to all the time for the ones they love. It’s not like it’s an uncommon concept to Brendon. He’s done it enough times for the process to be old hat, but this time it makes him slightly uneasy. This is different than keeping a dream journal because Phil told him to, or not consuming anything besides protein shakes because Devon didn’t like fat people, or letting Josh fuck him in alleys because he had a thing for rockstar and groupie roleplaying. This a lot different than learning how to smoke joints with Jon - the only time he changed himself and liked himself better for it. 

He’s not paying a lot of attention to his boyfriends in the front, so it comes as a surprise when Gerard pulls into a parking lot of a open until midnight Walmart. They park, and before Brendon can push the back of the seat forward so he can get out, Mikey’s pulling it and climbing into the space beside him. “He’ll be back in a minute.”

By the time Gerard comes back out Brendon’s brain is fritzing a bit, and there’s a red splotch on his neck that will blacken just in time for work tomorrow. Luckily Ryan is the only male in his twenties that wouldn’t question Brendon’s sudden wearing of a scarf. Mikey doesn’t stop at the start of the car, just hooks his seat belt in before turning back to Brendon’s neck. 

The car stops again, and Brendon thinks it’s probably too early for them to be home already, but then Mikey can be very distracting and it’s hard to be sure. The passenger door opens, and Brendon looks up. It takes all of point five seconds to suss out that the man is a prostitute. “Um.”

Gerard twists in his seat, so he’s half looking at Brendon, half at the hooker. “Me and Mikey were thinking you could have fun with Eddie here. And then you could, you know, have _fun_ with Eddie.”

Mikey whispers in his ear _if you can get it up again after you clean up the blood, I think we should reward Gee for his nice manners. You have to clean up though. He doesn’t like blood like we do_ before licking his earlobe.

Brendon tries not to choke on his tongue. He can’t hyperventilate right now, he _just can’t_. Mikey’s still crowding him as the car continues on down the road and Brendon can’t freak out, even though he wants to so badly. A breath stutters in his throat and he nods while his thoughts are screaming in his head. He hadn’t expected this leap of logic on their part. Maybe he should have been paying more attention while they were talking because this is crazy. They must think this is a gift, considering what Brendon’s ‘triggers’ are supposed to be. How is he supposed to turn them down? He can’t and that makes him almost hyperventilate again. 

Not going through with this would only cause problems and Brendon doesn’t want that. But he doesn’t even know where to begin. Fantasies aside he’s never actually been a violent person. He doesn’t exactly have the urge to hurt, _to kill_ , and what if that becomes blindingly apparent? 

His breathing starts to speed up just thinking about it. They’re going to figure it out and he’s going to be alone again. It takes all his will to tamp down on the panic so he can calm down. He can’t be obvious. They know he’s not way, way experienced. He’ll just have to play that up because there’s no way out of this. He can’t, _won’t_ lose them and if this is what it takes to make sure that never happens. Then well, that’s okay. He can do this. 

“So if you guys don’t have a place to go, I know this hotel. Pay by the hour, cheap rate, no cameras that your pissy wives can ask about three weeks from now,” Eddie suggests from the front seat. His name won’t really be Eddie, it’s probably something Gerard came up with to make this situation more relevant to his past kills. It’s almost sweet, in a horrifying way.

“Great!” Brendon answers. At least he doesn’t have to figure out where to safely kill someone.

The hotel is as disgustingly sleazy as Eddie made it sound. There’s a glass wall protecting the manager from the customers, it’s nearly opaque with fingerprints and what looks like spit. There’s a single armchair, under a plastic shrub with it’s leaves black and curled like whomever was smoking meth near it lit the bowl too close. The burgundy fabric has a darker stain, he can think of five things it might be and none are pleasant. Brendon stands with his arms crossed, hands tucked into his armpits. There’s not a surface in the lobby he feels comfortable touching. Mikey doesn’t seem to have the same issue, he’s leaning against the wallpaper as Gerard pays, hand tucked into the back pocket of Brendon’s jeans. One thing he’s certain of is this should not be giving off the ‘going on a date’ vibe it currently is. 

Once they’re in their room the three of them start stripping like it’s nothing. Brendon follows reluctantly. He keeps his socks on. He likes the pair, they have Easter eggs on them, but if it’s between wearing them and letting his feet touch the carpet he’ll gladly sacrifice them to the god of Not Getting Ringworm. The longer he stands there the more Gerard and Mikey stare at him. Finally Gerard pipes up “it’s okay, it’s not cheating, we won’t be mad. We want to watch you, Bren. We want to watch you do _everything_.”

The prostitute smirks at that, obviously deriving a different meaning from the statement. Mikey smirks back. The hooker falls to his back on the bed, almost slipping against the still sweaty sheets. Brendon isn’t sure what he wants to touch less, the obviously used blankets or Eddie. “Come on. Don’t you want to do everything to me?”

Now Gerard is smiling too. Brendon knows it’s because Eddie is being a jerk, and they think that he gets triggered from men acting like jerks in bed. They think they’ve set up something perfectly for him, and the only way he can thank them is by having sex with this man. He casts his eye around the room. There’s nothing he can use as a weapon, aside from trying to smother him with a pillow. The yellow from saliva pillow that will probably give him finger cancer if he picks it up. There’s no tv to break for a piece of glass, the lamp is bolted to the wall. 

Out of desperation he opens the drawer of the nightstand. There’s nothing in it but a single piece of hotel stationary, a pen, and a Gideon bible, splayed open, half the papers ripped out, probably used for joints. Eddie smirks “you won’t find any lube in there, boy. I won’t need it either, not for someone your size.”

Brendon’s confident about his dick. It’s the one thing that all his shitty exes agreed on, he’s good in bed. He doesn’t look over at Mikey and Gerard, but he knows they’re smiling, happy that this guy is shit talking him. From a customer standpoint, he can’t help but wonder who would really want to continue having sex with someone so rude. But that doesn’t matter now, since he’s going to be the last John he ever has. And it gives him a good excuse. He doesn’t have to force himself to have disgusting sex with someone that doesn’t care about him, not if the guy is being a jerk before sex even starts.

He goes to close the drawer and the pen rolls around a little, catching his attention. He picks it up and uncaps it. There’s nothing special about it, it probably doesn’t even have ink in it, too empty to be any use in writing things down.

“Love notes are sweet and all but this isn’t junior high, princess. Fucking is fucking and I’d think, boy, with bedtime nearing you’d be quicker to participate before your parents sent you to bed.”

Brendon’s fingers curl tighter around the pen. Eddie smirks at him when he climbs on the bed and straddles his stomach, the uncapped pen still clenched in his hand. Brendon’s not thinking about sex -he’s not even hard- when he breathes out slowly before leaning down towards Eddie as a distraction while he traces an upward path across the hooker’s skin with the rounded end of the pen. He doesn’t think about it when he leans back again and flips the pen end over end once in his hand. One breath, two, and he brings the pen up and then quickly down. He loses his grip near the end though and the pen doesn’t do what he was hoping. It sort of just squishes into Eddie’s right eye, the tip embedded but nothing else.

The guy starts to scream and Brendon freezes because he doesn’t know what to do. Then it’s all he can do to hold on when the hooker starts to thrash. Gerard starts toward them to help and Brendon can’t have that because they can’t think he’s not capable of this.

With all his might he holds on tight when Eddie bucks and then on the downward motion of the movement he uses the momentum and the heel of his hand to drive the pen in as deep as it’ll go. Suddenly the screaming stops, along with the thrashing, and Brendon’s left clinging to a body that’s shivering and twitching but not actively trying to dislodge him. He wraps his hand around the visible portion of the pen and twists it several times in a circular motion just to be sure before leaning back away from the mess and tugging on the pen.

There’s a sickening squelch of a pop when the pen comes free and blood starts to leak out at a faster pace. Brendon just sort of stares. Never in his dreams or fantasies has the act of eye gouging looked like this, bright, bright blood bubbling up and out of a ruined eye socket while the body under him is slowly beginning to still from after tremors. He’s not sure he enjoys it but it’s not entirely repulsive either.

“Nicely done,” is Gerard’s low comment. Mikey doesn’t say anything, but he holds his hand out, and Brendon crawls off the man -the dead man- to take it. With linked fingers Mikey leans down and whispers into his ear _we’ll never be like Shawn. We’ll always love you_. Brendon knows. Mikey didn’t have to say it, he _knows_


	6. Chapter 6

With three people sharing the king bed, you can’t help but wake up when someone has to get up for work. As it’s a Saturday, it should be him and Gerard that are jostling the covers and Brendon that would be glaring if his eyes weren’t shut against the glare through the window. Although that’s better now, now that it’s not a flat sheet draped haphazardly over the metal rod that occasionally falls and causes agony for the first up, but an actual curtain. Brendon is slowly replacing half the things they own, but it’s his money, and it’s his house too, so he and Gee don’t really comment. 

Of course, it’s _Brendon_ , so when Gerard wriggles down the middle of the bed to crawl out the bottom, Brendon gets up to follow him. Which, is loving and lovely, but fuck that. It’s a rare day off, Mikey’s not getting up unless it’s four in the afternoon. Or if he has to piss. If Brendon can get enough coherency out of Gerard so early in the morning that he can talk him into sex, good for him. Mikey will get his sex at a decent hour. 

It takes him a moment to fall back asleep. The sheets feel different, crisp in a foreign enough way that Mikey’s still not used to. Brendon’s taken to the habit of changing their bedding the day after sex and Mikey’s not sure he’s ever been around this many clean sheets in his life. But whatever, as long as he doesn’t have to wash them or sleep on an uncovered mattress he’s fine with it, even if the sheets don’t bunch the way he’s used to when they haven’t been washed in forever. 

There’s no telling what time it is when he wakes up again. He’s the only one in bed, which means Brendon never came back after seeing Gerard off. Mikey shrugs and heads to the bathroom. Brendon probably found something on tv to watch and fell asleep on the couch. 

However when he passes by the kitchen on his way to the living room, he finds Brendon using a broom to sweep cobwebs from the corners of the ceiling. Mikey has no clue where the broom came from or even when it showed up. He doesn’t really care either. If Brendon feels like he needs a broom for shit then it can hide in the corner for all Mikey cares. 

It does mean that Mikey gets to watch Brendon lift his arms and raise up on his tip toes to reach the places he’s trying to get to, the faded tee he’s wearing riding up to show skin. As far as shows go, it’s pretty decent, but could be better. He makes a mental note to attempt to convince Brendon that all cleaning must occur in the nude. For now coffee’s far more important. It’s taken awhile, but he’s gotten used to how Brendon’s coffee is always weaker. As long as it’s still drinkable that’s all that really matters. And really, it takes _a lot_ to make coffee undrinkable.

“Morning,” he grunts, coping a quick feel as he grabs the mug beside the coffee maker. After three days of Gerard pitching a fit about not having any mugs, always too sleepy to remember what cupboard Brendon likes to put them in, they struck a compromise. Brendon gets to wash the mugs instead of having them line up like bowling pins beside the sink, as long as he leaves two beside the machine. 

“It’s, like, three in the afternoon Mikey.” Brendon doesn’t say it as a criticism, which is a relief. It would suck if Brendon was a dick.

“Earlier than I’d planned, but whatever.”

“Earlier?”

“Day off, dude. I should sleep twenty four hours straight. Evens out with the three hour nights.” Not that there have been a lot of those, recently. Mikey still goes to bars, but he doesn’t fuck other people after the bar closes, getting in at dawn. Right now with Brendon as an added thrill he doesn’t need it. Maybe in the future. Though Brendon would probably take it pretty shittily. Whatever, he can worry about it when it happens. While his boredom threshold is low, he still hasn’t had time to figure out half of Brendon’s kinks.

“Yeah, I guess. I’m probably gonna go walking, taking pictures. I haven’t done it in a while, and I’m running really low of prints to give Ryan. He’s gonna get suspicious if I don’t have stuff.” Brendon sighs, fake world-weary as he adds “he’ll probably find some way to blame it on Jon.”

“An ex? One of the ones you offed?” Which, when Gerard comes home, they need to talk about, before it becomes an issue. But Mikey’s gonna wait for Gerard. His older brother is better at the tact thing. Or if not better, at least better with apologising after saying shitty things. Mikey doesn’t like apologising. He wouldn’t do things if he thought he’d have to feel guilty about them. 

“What? Oh, no. Jon’s still around. He broke my heart, I guess, sort of. One of those I want him to be happy, and other places are happier than my apartment sort of things. I’m pretty sure Ryan’s the only one that was upset about it. He holds a grudge the best of anyone I know, and that’s including the six weeks of S K Anon.”

Part of Mikey wants to meet Ryan. He sounds interesting, and Brendon obviously really cares about him. But that’s Brendon’s choice, not his, and Brendon seemed pretty against it in the food court, so. Change of topic’s best, probably. “It’s your day off too, why the fuck are you cleaning?”

Brendon shrugs and lowers the broom before going to the trash can and pulling the cobwebs off the bristles so he can throw them away.

“Used to it I guess. I don’t have to think about too much and I get to be productive. Win-win situation.”

Mikey’s not sure he will ever understand how cleaning can be part of a win-win situation but it’s not hard to get the concept that to Brendon cleaning is calming. It’s a weird way to zen, not that Mikey’s going to say anything about getting Brendon to stop even if he’s not going to readily pitch in to help. 

Brendon walks past him and uses the broom to sweep around the bottom sides of the fridge before raising back up on his tip toes again, this time so he can reach the top of the seemingly empty fridge. The moment he brings the bristles forward dust puffs up and a square object tumbles to the kitchen tiles. 

Mikey was wondering where their Invader Zim calendar had gone to. Apparently it was chilling out on the top of the fridge for god knows how long. Brendon bends down to pick it up and when he straightens out he’s got the calendar pinched between two fingers, looking at it warily as if the collection of once glossy pages is going to actively try to give him a paper cut or something. He moves to chuck the calendar.

“Dude, you can’t throw it out!”

“It says two thousand and seven on it.”

“Yeah?” 

“You do know it’s two thousand ten, right?”

“Yeaaaah?” He’s not retarded, for fuck sakes. “But it’s _Invader Zim_.” 

Brendon looks at it for a second. Mikey thinks he might have won him over with his excellent arguing point, but then Brendon says “it’s crusty. Why is it crusty?” Mikey has no freakin idea -who who pay attention to how any stains happen, they just do- but he opens his mouth to bullshit something, and then Brendon talks over him. “No, never mind. Don’t answer that. I really don’t want to know.” 

Mikey plucks the calender out of Brendon’s hand to rifle through the months. There’s one still that’s especially awesome, of Dib and Zim in Skool, Mrs Bitters slinked like a snake behind them. “You ever think Dib and Zim hooked up?”

“What?” Brendon sounds genuinely confused. Mikey can’t help but wonder what he used to argue with _his_ friends about in high school, but doesn’t ask. Fuck knows if there are bad memories attached. Brendon’s never asked about their past, it’s only fair to do the same.

Still, he’s curious to know Brendon’s opinion. He draws Brendon closer, letting the broom clatter to the floor. Gerard’s got a ton of great features, but the way Brendon’s ass fits in the curve of his hands is fucking brilliant. “You’ve watched Invader Zim right? Tell me you have.” It’s practically a crime against humanity if he hasn’t. If he hasn’t, fuck the cleaning and Brendon’s zen, they’re sitting down and having a marathon. 

“Yeah, I’ve watched it. I’ve just never thought about a boy and an alien hooking up.” Brendon’s breath smells good, like cinnamon toast. Maybe he can make him some, after this of course. Sex is far higher on the importance scale than food.

Mikey pulls him forcefully against his hips. He’s still half hard from waking up, there’s no way Brendon can miss it. “It would be hardcore hate-sex. Think about it. They wouldn’t even make it to the bedroom, Zim’s got his house locked down tight.”

Brendon whimpers. Mikey bites down on his boyfriend’s lip before he can see him smirking. Lately Brendon’s started to do that when Mikey mentions the bedroom, conditioning or something from the epic amounts of sex they have. He can only approve, and he’s sure Gerard does too. Prudes are boring. 

“They wouldn’t even want to get each other off, you know?” It’s easy to trap Brendon between himself and the oven, it only takes a few steps. “It would be as much grappling as groping, neither one willing to let the other be on top.” Instinct and years of doing this lets Mikey put pressure on Brendon’s asshole through two layers of cloth. Brendon gasps again, Mikey wonders if maybe he’s still sensitive from Gerard fucking him. Fuck, he just wants to strip his boyfriend and see how raw he is. Fuck him hard and lick the pain away. Which, “you remember Zim’s tongue? All long and forked? They would never kiss, Dib’d rather cut his lips off. But what if Zim forced him to roll over, and yanked down his pants? I bet he’d rim Dib ‘til he fucking cried.”

“Holy _shit_ , Mikey.” He’d grin, but it’s more fun to lick Brendon’s lips, a slow circle like putting on makeup. 

“They hate each other, and that could be so fucking delicious.” He relocates his free hand to Brendon’s crotch, the other still working the line of Brendon’s crack under his loose jeans. “Dib’s hand on Zim’s cock, it would be flushed brown, red blood behind green skin. He’d squeeze so tight” Brendon bucks into Mikey’s overly rough grabbing hand, “too tight for anyone normal to enjoy it. But Zim would, and Dib would get off on it too.”

He pauses for a minute so he can lift up Brendon’s shirt and bite a mark onto his chest. Another, anyway, he’s already got a bunch in various shades of bruise. Mikey has to be more creative for where he bites Brendon, apparently Ryan will notice if there are too many on his neck. Brendon keeps squirming under the pressure of both hands, each fidget making his skin tug against his teeth’s tight clench.

“They wouldn’t fuck, couldn’t trust each other for that. You only want someone that’s gonna fuck you right, right?” Brendon groans, and Mikey’s suddenly sure that he missed out on something good when he stayed in bed before Gerard left. But it’s okay, he just needs to make sure he get a replay when Gerard comes home. “But they’d rut, they’d claw and grab and shove at each other’s hips until they came, right?”

After that he stops. He’s almost ready, too close to try and maintain a story. Brendon’s probably not hearing it anymore anyway, senses shorting out. Mikey presses himself faster, harder against Brendon until he has no choice but to let go of the pressure sparkling in his belly and cover the inside of his boxers. It’s not like it matters anyway. Mikey gives it fifteen minutes or less before Brendon picks up the discarded pair and takes them off to the laundry basket he has installed in the bathroom.

***

Sunlight bounces off of the metal of over a dozen cars and Gerard squints some from the glare. It’s always a bit of a daze having to adjust to when the sun’s still shining brightly in the sky after working under florescent lighting that barely does any justice to natural light. Not to mention it’s a Saturday evening and the mall’s parking lot is pretty much packed to the gills with vehicles. 

The walk to the car takes long enough that he’s thinking about how bad work was. Two customers who wanted full refunds without receipts, a lady who complained about the structure of the murder mystery section in dept and detail for fifteen minutes while following him around when he was shopping back unwanted books, a wailing baby with a bitchy mom, three preschool aged children who got away from their sitter and demolished a novelty display that he had to rebuild afterwards, and a quick change artist who thought it was within his rights to rant at Gerard about how fired he was for calling a manager instead of just handing the guy _his_ fifty dollar bill. Sometimes people tax him and he just wants to snap. Maybe roll up one of the larger plastic purchase bags and wrap it around someone’s neck until they stop breathing. He should have known that any morning that starts off well will have it’s buzz trampled thoroughly by the joys and wonders of retail. That doesn’t mean he wanted to have his job threatened by a dick who had no basis to have his job anyways. 

His keys shift around in his pocket when he fiddles around for them when he finally gets to the car. A lady weaves through a few of the near by cars, her yellow skirt basking in the evening sun’s glow, and stops in front of the passenger side of the car parked right next to his. She smiles for a second before using her key to pop open the passenger door and climbing in. Gerard watches her from over the roof of his own car while opening the driver’s side door. It would be so easy to just go up to her, but he doesn’t. 

The driver’s side door opens with a creak and he slides into the driver’s seat the same moment a middle aged guy strolls by and gets into the car next to him. He lets them leave first and tries his best not to think about tailing them or finding a good place to pick someone up at. It might take the edge off but it could be so much better if he had Mikey and Brendon with him. The three of them together sharing in on it.

He starts up the ignition and goes home. Belting along to the angry lyrics of the Murderdolls isn’t enough, isn’t nearly enough. But it’s as good as he’s going to get right now. 

Gerard’s almost surprised to find Mikey and Brendon both sitting on the couch watching a burned to DVR copy of Alice. It’s a good choice; Brendon with his disturbing enjoyment of offensive Disney films doesn’t exactly fit in with his and Mikey’s enjoyment of real movies like Star Wars and Jaws, but everyone likes Johnny Depp. Still, he was ninety percent sure he’d walk in on fucking, or Brendon’s hands tied to his knees, or something else orgasm related. A shift length expanse of time really should involve multiple orgasms, knowing Mikey.

“Can we talk?” he asks, standing in front of the television. Brendon for some reason is looking at his shoes, but Mikey presses the power button on the Xbox controller until it turns on and he can flick the setting to pause. 

“What’s up, Gee?”

One hand rifling his hair back off his forehead, the other clenched tightly around his work belt, he explains. “Basically, I want to choke a bitch. Uh. Bitch not necessarily implying a female, you know I don’t care about that. But today has been a fucking shithole of a day, and I had about five opportunities in the parking lot, but I refrained. Because I thought you guys might want to come with.”

“Cool,” Mikey says.

“So, uh, yeah. I’m gonna go choke a bitch. Anyone that wants to come needs to be in the car in the next five minutes.”

“Wait.” Gerard, already half out the living room turns and glares at his brother. Now is not the time for waiting, waiting means patience and his entire quota of patience has been thoroughly used the fuck up at work. He wants go.

“Calm the fuck down, Gerard. We’ll get to it. But we need to talk about Brendon’s fuckup before we go anywhere.”

The hell of it is, Mikey’s right. As much as he craves driving fifteen minutes to the nearest pool hall to make sure he gets someone whom no one cares if they ever come back, he’s going to need to put it off. Patience, it’s the dirtiest fucking word in the world. Besides maybe the ‘I’ word, which neither he nor Mikey have ever used in conversation. Everyone else would label them, but they won’t do it to themselves.

“What?” Brendon sounds confused, and when Gerard looks over at him he doesn’t look much better.

“You fucked up,” Mikey explains. If anything Brendon looks worse at the statement, shrinking into himself almost like a baby bird that’s been pushed out of the nest too early and can’t understand why he’s being punished for it. Gerard doesn’t have much room for consideration or empathy right now, but he hates seeing Brendon look like that. He glares at Mikey a second time, this time a _shut the fuck up_ instead of a _I hate you go die in a fire_ statement in the contortion of his face.

“What Mikey _meant_ was that you made a few mistakes. It’s understandable, but it can’t happen again. The sort of thing we do, we really can’t afford mistakes. You know that, right, Brendon?” 

Brendon makes a small _mmmm_ noise of affirmation, but still looks like he thinks Gerard and Mikey are going to hit him or scream at him. If Gerard didn’t know that Brendon had already taken care of it, he’d really like to travel around Brendon’s old haunts and kill whoever made that an instinctual response. Well, he’d probably actually leave it to Mikey. Mikey’s form of meting punishment would be more drawn out, more fitting to the situation. 

Gerard spares himself a moment to think of it. Not the actual blood, spatter and spray isn’t really his thing, the way it is for his boyfriends. But the look on the ex’s face, the delicious look of agony and fear, the remorse Mikey would carve into their expression if need be, that’s something Gerard could get lost in. But this is a conversation that needs to be had, and the sooner the better. And if he’s going to do this, he might as well do it comfortably. He walks to the empty couch and stretches out his legs, propping his feet on the oddly barren coffee table. It’s only with them up that he sees they’re covered in mud, which is probably why Brendon was wincing earlier. Whatever, he’ll clean it later. It’s not like mud is going to make the table disintegrate into it’s individual atoms anyway.

“I think it’s probably because you’re used to killing people in their houses. But you’re not going to be killing boyfriends anymore-”

“We hope,” Mikey interrupts.

“And there are things that have to be different the way things will work now.”

“Sorry. I got caught up in past memories, I guess? Sorry.”

Gerard waves off the apology, Mikey saying his words for him. “Don’t be sorry. Just don’t be an idiot anymore, just do it differently.” Okay, so not exactly what he would have said. It’s close enough that he doesn’t need to glare at his brother.

“The first issue is you letting him decide to go to a hotel. That was bad for about half a dozen reasons, Brendon.”

“Seriously.” Mikey affirms.

“Hotels and motels can have cameras. Would more often than wouldn’t, actually. The room itself probably wouldn’t, no crack security team watching you live. But what happens when they roll through tape and see the three guys the dead hooker on the bed came in with? One classic Greek God pose and you’ve got a perfect head on photo for them to plaster over the news. Hotels also have a distinct lack of exits. Did you think about how fucking lucky we were that the window opened so Mikey was able to drive the car around when we shoved the body out? You’ve never dealt with disposal before, I know. But you need to start thinking about end game before you start.”

“Makes sense.”

“Not done yet. Gerard won’t get this part, but trust me Bren, I do. I know how fucking amazing it is to hear them screaming. Even if the begging gets tedious. Houses and apartments are evidently fine for that, and I can show you places that are. Hotels are not a place where you want prolonged screaming.”

“What if the guy at the desk had actually given enough of a shit to come check on why someone was screaming? He’s got room keys, even if you tried to tell him not to come in. And then there’s the fact that you let him decide what you were gonna do. You can’t give victims any control. Give an inch, they’ll take a mile.”

“Right.” 

“But beyond the hotel thing, there’s also another problem.”

Mikey picks up the topic, which makes Gerard happy. Mikey and Brendon are the weakest link of the relationship, so every time Mikey shows that he cares Gerard feels reassured that Brendon knows. “I noticed, I’m sure Gee saw it too. You didn’t seem to be enjoying yourself. That’s shitty. What was wrong? Hell, there’s no point in doing it if you’re not having fun.”

“Um. I think it was because of the prostitute.”

Gerard scratches his head. He absently curls his thumbnail under his other nails to pry out the white flakes as he waits for a better explanation. “He was a jerk, but that was sort of the point, right? To recreate things?”

“But he. It wasn’t.” Brendon drops his face into his hands for a second before looking up and trying again. “It’s not going to work, I don’t think. I loved them, and they loved me-”

“Those fuckers didn’t love you, that’s _not_ love, Brendon,” Mikey snaps. Gerard knows Mikey’s offended by the idea, though he’s not sure if Brendon realises it.

“Okay, so I loved them and it seemed like they loved me back. Until I knew they didn’t, and I snapped. But it was never like that. I didn’t want to have sex with that guy, it wasn’t anything like having sex with a boyfriend and I couldn’t make my brain pretend.”

“So, then-”

“Look, I’m not saying I’m going to stop. But I really don’t want to pretend they’re boyfriends or anything. Okay? I have you two, and that’s good. It’s so good, you can’t even understand. I don’t want to mess that up with pretending some prostitute cares about me.” His tone is odd, adamant yet hesitant, like it’s not okay to have opinions. 

Gerard’s about to speak when Mikey cuts in. “That’s okay. Better even. It opens the search pool a lot wider, if it doesn’t have to be a boyfriend experience. We can basically pick up anyone, now.”

“Speaking of, can we? Seriously?”

Brendon’s the one that stands first, which Gerard takes as a yes.

***

It takes a minute for Gerard to lock the door and Brendon mentally adds ‘get more keys made’ to his mental list of things he needs to do. It’s right up there with buying several more random sheets or curtains for his collection of _things Ryan might need if he decides to create at three am_ and finding a way to rent a steam cleaner for the living room carpet. It’s far too dirty for any normal carpet. The moment the door finally locks, Mikey and Gerard start off through their neighbour’s yard to get to the car, which is parked several houses down. Brendon winces when a flower gets stepped on and, well, that explains the mud then. He thinks about following but can’t bring himself to tromp through wet flowerbeds and instead heads down to the road and balances his steps in the strip of emptiness between the road and the start of lawn.

Mikey and Gerard are waiting for him when he gets to the car and Brendon tries his best not to think too much about where they might be going. He needs to do better but it’s not something he’s used to. He’s just going to have to be more diligent because he can’t have them disappointed in him again. He’s usually a quick study so hopefully things will go smoother, with less mistakes, this time. 

He doesn’t want to have to sit through another conversation like before. He really doesn’t want to do this again, but he wants to be someone they can be proud of. When Mikey starts talking about how it would be easier if they go to this drug den he knows of, Brendon perks up a little bit. He can work with drug users. Prostitutes are different, sort of. He’s heard documentaries, knows that a lot of street walkers go home to families at the end of the day. But anyone that spends hours sitting in an derelict building smoking meth and gouging lines out of their faces where they imagine spiders are crawling either won’t have family, or their wife/husband/children will be better off without them. He agrees from the back seat and lets Gerard worry about directions.

Brendon’s only more certain when they pull up to a boarded up building that this is the best possible scenario. All the doors are bolted shut, but there’s a set of wooden emergency stairs to the second floor, black with rot. They don’t look like they’d hold the weight of a kitten, but Mikey darts up them first with hardly a pause, Gerard shortly behind him. Brendon looks at the railing dubiously before putting his hand on it. Better to get a hand full of splinters than not hold on and fall to his death. No person is going to be in a place like this, not if they’re decent.

It’s almost like Urban Exploring. There are damp wood panelled walls, a filthy couch and several even filthier mattresses laid out. Comparatively, the first days of the Way house were like walking into a germaphobe’s Cloroxed castle. Two guys in their twenties are sitting in the corner, and Brendon’s not close enough to hear their words, but they’re arguing and patting down the stained mattress. He can only guess that they finished their stash. Then a third guy comes up and holds his hand out. Brendon witnesses the deal going down silently, it’s only after the two stick a bit of whatever it is in a thing that looks like a science lab test tube that he turns to his boyfriends.

“I call the dealer, okay?” After all, a crack dealer is hardly a firefighting mom with three kids that does volunteer work at a children’s cancer ward. Police kill drug dealers without getting convicted all the time. It’s almost okay, and it’s the best he’s going to get. 

Neither of them tell him no so he takes that as an okay and slips through the opening. No one pays him any attention. The faded blue handled screw driver feels foreign wedged in his back pocket whenever he moves but Brendon’s pretty sure he needs something denser if he’s going to actually pull this off. He’d found it in the trunk when Mikey had opened it to get his own supplies carefully hidden under random pieces of scattered junk. He’d just arched an eyebrow when Brendon had fished the flat head screw driver from the empty hole where a spare tire should have been. The edge of the head had felt sharp and new, like maybe it’d seen the lid of a paint can once or twice but never enough action to be dull and only good for screws.

Part of him wants to watch how Mikey or Gerard works. Not because he enjoys this, but because it seems like something he needs to know and pay attention to. The rest of him keeps reminding himself that he needs to pull this off. Show that he was paying attention, so he does his best to block most of everything else out. Not enough that he’s not dimly aware of everything happening around him. Just enough for him to focus on the drug dealer, who’s finally noticed them. 

The guy approaches him, and Brendon shoves the very tiny voice in his head that says he shouldn’t do this down. He doesn’t even realized he’s kicked the guy’s feet out from under him till there’s a thump and a curse. He’s never really been good at defensive moves but somehow the slide kick worked this time. Following the guy down isn’t hard. He has to act fast though because he really does suck at fighting back.

The handle of the screw driver is solid in his grip. This time when he arcs down he doesn’t break the follow through and the screw driver doesn’t exactly sink into the drug dealer’s eye socket as much as it just sort of punches through it, weight, momentum, speed, and the application of metal smoothing the way. There’s a cut off scream still echoing in his ears and the guy’s twitching under him, almost like Eddie did but there are tiny differences, like the scratching of ratty sneakers on a dirty floor and fingernails scraping the ground. 

To be safe he lifts his hand slightly before shifting down again with his weight. The ruined eye weeps blood and grey matter. The blood doesn’t spray everywhere but it does coat up to the handle of the screw driver and his fingers. Brendon wasn’t interested in paying attention to that detail last time but this time it’s intriguing noticing the contrast between the shade of deep red and his skin tone. He twists the screw driver clockwise a full turn and slowly pulls it out, paying attention to how everything sounds and feels as he does so. 

His hand starts to cramp from the tight hold he has on it but he doesn’t let go of the screw driver. He doesn’t feel finished, not yet. It’s pure curiosity that causes him to run the gore covered tip of the screw driver under the open eyelid of the dead drug dealer. The guy’s motionless under him by now. He still doesn’t think he enjoys this but it’s just something else for him to figure out and work on. The tip of the screw driver digs into the slowly cooling flesh and Brendon angles the screw driver and applies enough pressure until he hears a slight pop. Then he tries the same thing again right under the brow line. It’s amazing how easy it really is to dislocate an eye, or even to just puncture it. 

Maybe he’s unintentionally still blocking everything else out around him. The sounds around him should be brighter and heavier than they are. He’s just barely aware of Mikey and Gerard off to his right. There’s nothing much left to do with crack dealer, he should really go see how they’re doing.

***

It’s good, like this. Everything is happier, and blurrier, which is good. Frank likes being happy. Frank likes not remembering things. When all that matters is the heat and if his syringe is clean life is very very good. Heroin makes it easy to sink into the broken springs of the couch, blanket warm and itchy. He doesn’t have to think, or remember, just bask and be content. 

It takes a while to notice that there are new people in the room. Even when he does, he can’t particularly classify it as caring. Two are standing over one who is kneeling over one who is lying down. For a minute Frank’s body tries to panic that some straight couple is having sex, before his brain calmly reminds him that if it’s true he just needs to shoot more until it doesn’t bother him. The problem being that he doesn’t have any more junk with his works, and he can’t see Jeff to buy more. But a slow blink reveals it’s a huddle of guys. So that’s fine, the universe has provided.

It’s some infinite time later that his CD stops. He’s hocked everything else he’s stolen, but no one will give someone money for a CD player in the year two thousand ten. In the time it takes to raise his hand to his chest and press play he hears a scream. Less scream than death rattle, really. He opens his eyes and looks over to the cluster of people, grime covered velvet catching on his hair. A more thorough scan shows one of the strangers is cutting lines into a junkie’s chest. Frank can only feel relief. This has to be an Angel of Death thing; people killing those who need to be put out of their suffering. Everyone here is miserable, happy people don’t inject heroin. He won’t run, just wait his turn. It might be more painful than an overdose, but it’ll make the Angels happy. Everyone deserves the chance to be as happy as he is right now. 

Frank’s pretty sure they don’t notice when Shaun comes out of the bathroom. Well, a makeshift bathroom, it doesn’t have running water. His shirt is covered in puke, which is normal for Shaun. He get sick a lot easier than Frank does, Shaun’s constitution less well suited to heroin than his. Frank pulls his legs into his body so his Shaun can sit at the other side of the couch. He doesn’t smell very good, but you have to take the bad with the good.

“Frank? Are they killing that guy?” Shaun doesn’t give Frank the time to answer, just pulls out his cell phone. Frank knows that’s bad. Even if he can’t _feel_ bad right now, he knows it’s bad. There’s no one Shaun could be calling that would be good. So he reaches for his emptied syringe and pulls back the plunger until the barrel is full of air. It’s more difficult to sit up than it is to slide the beautiful stretch of metal into the artery of Shaun’s neck. Shaun starts to shake, it’s nothing particularly interesting. Not worth continuing the struggle of sitting up. Frank closes his eyes and slumps back to the cushions, leaving the needle in Shaun’s neck. It’s dirty now, he can’t take it back.

When the strangers try to get him off the couch he goes willingly. Where ever they want to end him it’s okay with Frank. If they want to take him to their dump site before they start it’s completely understandable. Pointless, nobody would look into the circumstances of his death anyway. But if it makes them feel better, than they should do it.

***

As he walks to the bus stop, sunglasses firmly planted over his eyes, Mikey thinks of all the things he should thank Frank for. The list is enough to occupy him for hours.

First there’s that his favourite pair of padded restraints are ruined beyond hope of repair. Mikey didn’t even have a chance to try to wash the puke off, Brendon confiscated them with a gloved hand. The replacement pair he’s ordering online isn’t set to be here for two weeks, since he refused to pay an extra twenty five bucks for speedy shipping. 

Then there’s that the entire back of the house smells like sweat and piss and puke and on the most unfortunate of occasions, shit. Mikey dealt with it when it was Gerard, but once his brother got sober he never thought he’d be doing it again. Luckily Brendon seems to have that end of things pretty under control. He even has a knee high stack of bedding in the corner of the guest room, ready to be exchanged at a moment’s notice. Apparently thanks to Ryan Brendon knows where to buy the cheapest sheets in the city. It’s the garbage bag full of soiled cotton that is making the room smell, but no one feels like trekking out to the dumpster at the end of the street once every hour.

Not to mention that when all of this is over with they’re going to have to throw out the old mattress. Keeping it in the house afterwards would be too much of a biohazard. So not only will they have to buy a new one but they’ll have to cart the nasty old one out of the house. He didn’t sign on for manual labour when he agreed to this. If he wanted to volunteer for that he would be asking for more stocking shifts at work.

As it is, he’s actually had to ask for rotating shifts so he and Gerard are never working at the same time because someone needs to stay home with Frank and Brendon can’t not show up to The Weather Today. So it’s between him and his brother to bounce back and forth between who stays and who works. Earl hadn’t been happy about that, but then he’s never happy when Mikey has to change his shifts up. It’s like he thinks Mikey’s doing it on purpose to fuck up his scheduling process, which constitutes of plugging Mikey in wherever, whenever, for whatever coverage he needs. 

Along with the rotating shifts they can’t call for pizza, or any other form of take out really. The smell of grease and spices overpowers the house and Frank can’t handle it right now. Brendon’s taken to actually cooking things for meals. Mikey knows if that continues for long then there’ll be no way of stopping Brendon from doing it all the time and that would blow because Mikey loves pizza too much to give it up in the long run. 

Still, all of that sort of evens out to the way Frank saved their asses. He was so busy relieving the itch that’s been under his skin almost two months -Brendon’s kill at the motel hardly helped, if anything it made it worse because it was blood but it wasn’t his to claim- that he failed to notice another junkie walking into the room. He’s not sure how his boys missed it, but they did. It was a complete stranger that killed the junkie, for reasons he still hasn’t been able to explain. When they went over the guy’s cell phone was tossed onto the floor, 91 pressed into the current call display. It hardly took a genius to figure out what would have happened had the guy not saved their ass by killing him. Mikey couldn’t disagree when Gerard had suggested they return the favour, take the guy home and get him clean. 

What tips the scale heavily to the _hate Frank, wish we’d taken out all witnesses rather than take home the stray_ side is that Brendon and Gerard have turned into complete prudes in his presence. Apparently it’s ‘wrong’ to try and have noisy awesome sex with Frank moaning and sweating through another set of sheets across the hall. Mikey can’t even go for a kiss without either of them backing away. Gee glares at him sometimes as if trying to say _you’re making it worse, so stop_ and Brendon just sort of stays out of everyone’s way like he’s afraid to touch anyone more than necessary. 

Hell, Brendon’s even resorted to sleeping on the couch. It’s like he and Gee decided without Mikey’s approval that it’s for the best for Brendon to pretend to just be a friend crashing on the couch so they don’t freak Frank out. Mikey’s gotten used to Brendon curled against him during the night and the warm spot in the sheets. Gerard’s not much of a cuddler and Mikey wakes up with the sheets cold next to him and his brother on the other side of the bed. And even though they’re still sleeping in the same room, they’re not having sex. 

It’s pissing him off. Mikey really wants to get fucking laid but he’s pretty sure going to the bar wouldn’t go over too well with Brendon. Gee understands but Brendon’s not good about dealing with things like that and Mikey doesn’t really want to be stabbed in the eye with any myriad of objects that Brendon could possibly get his hands on. It’s amazing how many things they have in the house that could be used appropriately. Pens and pencils obviously, along with Gee's paint brushes if Brendon wandered into the art room and found them. There’s also the turning stick for the blinds in the living room, the thin handle of the bathroom scrubbing brush Brendon bought sometime in the past, and _fuck_ , even their toothbrushes. Thankfully the masses of cds they have are all in square packaging even if the corners are sharp. 

Mikey gets to the bus stop just as it rolls to a halt. It’ll take forty five minutes to get to work, and Brendon probably won’t pick him up after work because he’ll have rushed home to make dinner for them. And if it’s soup he’ll bitch if Mikey uses the wrong kind of spoon, because apparently that matters now that they have real metal spoons instead of plastic take out extras. 

He flashes his bus pass at the driver that couldn’t care less and mutters “fucking Frank” as he stumbles towards the back. Elementary school field trips taught him the best seats are always in the back, and the lesson has never faded. Gerard better find a new fixer-up project soon. Between the vegetables and the lack of sex Mikey’s going to go mental if he doesn’t.

***

It’s strange to be awake this early, but not rushing off to school or work. Gerard’s never gotten up before noon just to stay home and watch television at very low volume. Horror and sci-fi are the primary things on the Way tv, and both screams and raygun emissions are better appreciated at full blast. Even Brendon appreciates a good loud rendition of Part Of Your World, no matter how often Gerard tries to explain that The Little Mermaid is offensive. But Frank’s barely sleeping, and the last thing Gerard wants is an untimely ear shattering blond bimbo lost in the forest scream to wake Frank from the five minutes he might be getting.

Technically it’s probably more strange that they have a guest detoxing off heroin in their second bedroom. Most people’s reaction to seeing a junkie wouldn’t be _let’s take him home and fix him up_ , Gerard’s sure. Still, there wasn’t really anything else for it. Frank saved their collective ass by killing Shaun the moment he did. Even if they’d noticed a moment later the last number would have already been pressed and they would have been fucked. There had to be repayment for an action like that, and Brendon and Mikey had both agreed, and helped him drag Frank’s reeking body to the car. 

They’ve Googled as much as they can, trying to make sure the detox goes as smoothly as it can. Frank’s withdrawal has been going pretty well, considering. Between the bouts of puking and shitting he’s actually pretty entertaining to talk to. Either the dysphoria the internet said to expect hasn’t come up as a symptom, or Frank’s good at hiding his depression and irritability.

The scratching was a different problem altogether. Somewhere between the third and second night it got bad enough that they tried to cuff his hands to the bed so Frank couldn’t rip at his own skin any longer. A liberal application of projectile vomit dissuaded them from trying that method again. 

Instead Gerard’s found that reading helps distract Frank. Brendon was the first to notice that the tattoos covering his fingers said bookworm when lined up. When Frank calls him Gerard automatically grabs a book off one of the shelves in the living room. It’s one of the few things Brendon hasn’t cleaned, Mikey threatening to put a boot up his ass if he messes up Mikey’s completely inexplicable order. 

There’s no real rhyme or reason to how the books on the book case are shelved, so there’s no telling what he’s actually picked up without paying any attention to what he’s grabbed for. Brendon had casually mentioned the fact that they work at a bookstore and yet their own bookcase is in no decipherable form of order. Gerard had just shrugged because what does it matter if Asimov is chilling next to Tolkien and Bradbury. It’s not like a book’s going to get pissed that it’s not shelved alphabetically by its author’s last name. It does mean, though, that he’s not sure if he’s picked up a random Stephen King novel or any number of unusual books they tend to accumulate from nowhere. He’s pretty sure they have a copy of _Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery_ laying somewhere up on the shelves just because it’s quirky and different. Gerard’s not sure he would want to start reading that right now. 

A quick glance down at his hand assures him that he’s not going to have to worry about that. The spine of the book is blue and black and not even medium in span. He’s somehow picked up _The Dead Zone_ instead of _The Shining_ or _The Stand_. It’s still better than a doctor going on and on about the joys and tribulations of the human body. 

When he gets to the spare room, he kind of waves the book around in a flail just to prove that _yes_ he was indeed victorious in finding something to read and _no_ he was not eaten by the bookcase during his endeavour. Drawings of bookcase monsters aside, he’s usually victorious when he grabs a book regardless of how Brendon eyes the thing like it’s going to grow legs and stomp off to go terrorize a small farming village. 

Frank for his part just sort of stares at him for a second with a half smile on his face. “I’m fresh out of gold metals, if you wanted one.”

Gerard doesn’t pay much attention to the comment. Frank’s sarcasm has started to shine through and it’s good to know that there’s someone tripping around in his head with enough presence to be sarcastic. The chair they have in the spare room isn’t particularly comfortable, but it’s that or sitting on the bed. He’s been choosing the chair to give Frank space, and that doesn't change now.

“I have The Dead Zone. A guy gets into a car accident and sits in a coma for five years and when he wakes up he can see the past, and or future when he touches people. It’s not exactly as frightening as some of King’s other shit but it’s disillusioned and jaded. Plus the main character is named John Smith. Thankfully he’s not a dick like the historical one.”

Gerard flips past the first couple of pages to get to the prologue. He thinks about skipping it as well but decides against it. He doesn’t exactly have a history of reading aloud, he’s not one of the staff that mans the children’s section at work, but he thinks his orating is pretty decent. Even if it wasn’t, it’s the only option. Mikey would shit a brick if Frank puked on one of his books. From the way Frank smiles slightly as he settles into the words, it’s clear Frank at least appreciates the effort.

***

The calculator has the price negative four hundred and ninety nine glaring at him in big blocky font from the display screen. Brendon has to blink a couple of times before he realizes he’s put in the sequence in wrong. With Frank around he isn’t getting much rest, waking up at all hours of the night just to see if he needs anything. Sleeping on one of the couches in the living room isn’t helping him any on that front either. If he isn’t dreaming of the mystery stain on one of the cushions eating him, he’s dreaming about the carpet pulling itself free of the floor and smothering him. 

With sloppy fingers, he hits clear on the calculator and slowly put the numbers in again. Usually the slow selling merchandise rack isn’t this hard to mark down for (hopefully) a quicker sale. Today though, Brendon’s had to fight thread and needle to just get the first three items; a weird looking pair of pants that reminded him of vinyl siding, a skirt that was more bathing suit wrap than skirt, and a shirt with lace stitched in the sleeves, to price right. First the labels in the pricing gun jammed, then the ink cartridge bled dry right after he finally had the pricing gun fixed from its affliction of eating the label stickers. And now the calculator is conspiring against him. 

He’s too busy trying to recalculate a price for a scarf swimming with neon ducks for the third time that he doesn’t even realize Ryan’s standing right next to him until he starts to speak. 

“You haven’t given me pictures in five days.” 

“Sorry?” Supplying Ryan hasn’t been the foremost on his mind, which was obviously a mistake. Ryan is a good friend, but he’s a needy combination of artist and child, and like any three year old that starts throwing toys to get attention, Ryan’s going to make a big deal out of not having new photos. 

“You’ve been distracted too. You didn’t even smile at the last customer, don’t think I didn’t notice. Are you with Jon again? Has he seduced you with his siren call?”

Oh, for fuck sakes. It’s the end of June, it’s been six fucking months since they broke up. Any day now he’s going to get an email invitation to the Walker-Conrad commitment ceremony. “Wouldn’t I have more pictures, not less, if I was with Jon?”

Ryan crosses his arm, rubber squeaking painfully. “Not if he had you involved with a wicked orgy of debauchment!”

“Two people is not an orgy, Ryan.” Heck, even what he has with Gerard and Mikey probably isn’t an orgy. An orgy is like seven people. Like an entire room full of people having sex. Which actually sounds pretty nice right about now. Mikey’s so on edge right now that another sneeze would have him toppling off, and Brendon is doing his best to avoid him as to not get sucked into something. Avoidance is his only line of defense.

It’s not until he looks away from the glaring screen that he sees Ryan’s purpling face and realises the mistake he’s made. It’s too late though. “A-HA! So you _admit_ you’re having wicked debauchment with him!”

Normally he’d argue, try to talk Ryan down from his insane bullshit. But he’s just too tired for the energy that takes. “You know what? I’m going to go see Lizard Guy. You can stay out here for a bit, since you’re obviously not creating in the back anyway.”

“But.” Ryan frowns. “There are customers. And there are stupid not-customers who put their stupid hands on everything and don’t buy any of it!”

Brendon glares. “Deal with it.”

It’s less than a minutes walk to Lizard Guy, seeing as he’s only next door to The Weather Today. While Brendon is vaguely revolted by the actual reptiles, Lizard Guy himself is really awesome. Plus it’s fun watching parents nervously shift from one foot to the other as their children gape in awe at the snakes or frogs Lizard Guy pulls out to show them.

When he gets inside, there’s a couple looking at the turtle terrariums and a pair of teenagers pointing at the snakes resting in the other side of their glass display tanks. He watches as Lizard Guy starts showing the teens what could either be a rat snake or a coral snake. Brendon’s never been good at identifying slithering things so he’s not really sure. He’s really hoping it’s not a coral snake though, because he’s pretty sure those are supposed to be venomous. He’d rather not get bitten by one if it ever decides to make a slink for it and finds it’s way out of the reptile shop. 

Brendon’s not exactly sure how much time passes, but listening to Lizard Guy explain the differences between king snakes and coral snakes while his curly hair bounces and sways with the motion of his head is actually kind of calming. By the end of the discussion the teens shuffle off with a tiny lizard instead of a snake and Brendon gives them a wide berth when they pass by with their purchase. He follows them out. Maybe he can attempt to listen to Ryan’s ranting again.

***

Frank doesn’t consider himself an average junkie. There’s no question that he is/was addicted to smack, but everyone else that squatted in that room, frantically buying from Jeff, stealing or hooking or committing petty crime on his behalf, did it because they liked it. He did it because it was the only way he had to continue to live. That puts him a step above them, and makes it so that even clean he doesn’t feel bad for what he did to Shaun. Shaun would have shot up until the day he died. Hell, he _did_ shoot up on the day he died. Just because it’s fun for him. Frank’s hardly that pathetic.

Still, he doesn’t really have a choice about it. He needs to find someone and buy more. Probably just to smoke, his works are long abandoned and he can’t trust any needle he might buy from a dealer. Once they’re open in the morning he can drop in at the safe injection site and pick up a new one, but for now better to smoke it and waste a bit than get AIDS. 

It would be easy to sneak into Mikey and Gerard’s bedroom and find a wallet in a pair of pants, but he won’t. He can jack something impressive from somebody else’s house, or if shit gets desperate hold a knife on someone for their purse. Brendon and Gerard and Mikey have been trying their best to help him, he won’t repay that by stealing from them. He won’t even take Dead Zone, even though Gerard only got half way through it, and he’s dying to find out what happens to Johnny, and if he solves the murders. 

He can’t go to Jeff. Jeff is long dead, by the same hand that spent the first, nearly incoherent day wiping the sweat off his face. Brendon doesn’t really look like a killer, not like Gerard and his goth look, or Mikey and his stiff face, but there was pride and a hint of something else in his voice when he told Frank about killing him. But it’s Los Angeles, it’s not like there’s only one heroin dealer in the city. He just needs to get _out_.

Getting to the door of his room isn’t hard and the hinges make no sound when he opens the bedroom door enough to peek out. The hallway is empty, the other bedroom doors shut, and the bathroom door is mostly closed when he looks in that direction, only a tiny sliver of light escaping from the cracked portion of the door. The floor doesn’t creak under his feet when his steps get too heavy and Frank takes it to mean that the house agrees with him, helping him along the way. 

When he gets to the kitchen it’s empty, the sound of the tv in the living room filtering in through the other entry way. With a flick of his wrist, the back door is unlocked and he’s finally outside. Frank hasn’t been outside since he first showed up here and it’s a shock to realize he’s in a suburban area. It’s not Nick at Night reruns cookie cutter suburban, but still, it’s not exactly where he’s been used to staying lately. Somehow or another he’s fallen into the Serial Mom movie. There’s no other way to explain a house full of serial killers. 

He closes the door slowly behind him and starts to walk. He doesn’t let himself get distracted with the oddness of his location. His goal for the last slips of the fading evening has nothing to do with that so he’s not going to puzzle over it. He walks through people’s backyards, partially because he’s lost and partially because he doesn’t want to be seen on the edge of the street just yet. Plus if he wants to take something he first needs to have an idea what some of the houses in the area might have laying around behind their glass windows. 

It takes Frank longer than it should to figure out that he’s being followed. He only notices when he finally decides to slips from one backyard and just take his chances with the road. Frank’s pretty sure it’s Mikey. Gerard or Brendon would have said something by now. He has two choices; he can either keep walking or acknowledge that he’s finally clued on to the fact that he has a tail.

In the end he doesn’t get a chance to do either, Mikey speaks up first. “You’re going to get more heroin. Aren’t you.”

“Don’t sound so,” Frank searches for a word and can’t find it, “whatever. Like that. It’s not like I _like it_.”

“Right. Of course you don’t like the intoxicant you’re taking. Of course you don’t want to do more of it. You do know Gee was an alcoholic, right? How often did I clean him up only for him to start drinking again? At some point I didn’t even care anymore. But the difference is if you disappear now, you won’t come back. You don’t care enough to come back.” Mikey’s still walking with his long legged strides, catching up as Frank stills in the middle of the street.

He wants to protest that’s not true. Frank does care about them, otherwise he would have taken everything of retail value. Certainly he’s more interested in them than he ever was in Shaun, or Hambone before he overdosed, or the dozen others that only mattered to Frank when he was running low and they were still holding. It’s just heroin makes him forget a lot of things, and not care about what he can remember. Instead of explaining any of that he just says “it’s not my house.”

“You’re an idiot. It could be. If you stopped your bullshit, it could be.”

“I can’t stop.”

“Oh. Really. If you don’t enjoy it, and you’re physically fixed enough that you’re not lying in bed and puking on all my favourite things, why can’t you stop?”

It’s Mikey’s scorn more than anything that propels Frank into the nastiness that is the truth. Perfume and babysitters and no one believing him. He’s told it before, but only when his veins are flushed with juice and nothing matters. Sober it’s harder. Frank tries to not listen to himself, to forget the words even as they pass out of his mouth. If he doesn’t hear them, they’re not his, they’re not true. 

In response Mikey just shakes his head, his glasses slipping further down on his nose. “You don’t have to forget. You just need to get revenge. Come back to the house, we’ll talk about it.” 

Frank’s not entirely sure what he means, though he has his guesses. But it still sounds better than filling himself with chemical emptiness to make life possible to live. He reaches for Mikey’s hand, and Mikey’s slim fingers interlock with his as they begin to walk home.


	7. Chapter 7

Gerard and Brendon are being very pussy-footed about this whole thing, and Mikey’s not sure he approves. Brendon is all hesitantly huggy, which seems ridiculous because Frank is pretty much a dive-bomber. They all have bruises from Frank jumping on one of them for a good spot for a movie. Gerard is leaving rape recovery links open in tabs on the computer, all sorts of _it’s not your fault_ messages. That’s ridiculous too, because of course it’s not. It’s that vile bitch that fucked Frank’s head for life, and Frank has to know that already. He leaves the tabs up in case Frank wants to peruse, but doesn’t expect they’ll help.

None of them are saying anything out loud, which is bullshit. So, like always, it’s up to Mikey to be the one with courage. “Do you have any triggers?”

The four of them are sprawled over the two couches, watching Criminal Minds for the irony of it. Brendon’s spoon stills halfway to his mouth. He’s the only one still eating, having gotten home almost two hours late from Ryan having a crisis of faith. The mental image of Ryan’s wallpaper overalls makes Mikey want to giggle, so he won’t think about it until this conversation is over. 

“What?”

“Triggers. Stuff that makes you think about her. Like if she touched your shoulders in a certain way, Gerard won’t ask for a piggyback ride.” Not that he would anyway, but this talk will go over best if everyone feels invested.

Frank scowls. “You remember the whole point of heroin was not thinking about her, right?”

“Yes. That’s sort of my point. You’re not doing that shit anymore, so we need to be more careful. What’s going to be bad for you?”

Frank’s eyes are closed, and he’s shaking. Brendon puts his bowl down and goes to lean against him before pausing. Ugh, fucking stupid. “Hug him, you twat!”

“Mikey!” Gerard raps. Mikey crosses his arms and raises his eyebrows, defying his brother to tell him Brendon isn’t a giant douche. “Maybe Frank doesn’t like hearing...women parts,” he finishes, quieter. Which, okay, Gerard has a possible point. But Frank looks more comfortable with his head on Brendon’s shoulder, so he stands by his statement. 

“Perfume. It’s. She. There was always this smell of flowers, when.” It’s not a lot of detail, but it’s enough that Mikey wants to track her down and take his time with her.

Gerard bursts into standing up, half finished bowl of soup spilling over the middle cushion and onto the floor. Mikey watches Gerard stalk away, looks back to Brendon and Frank. Brendon’s twitching as the diameter of the spill gets larger, but he doesn’t let go of Frank. For Brendon’s sake, Mikey sloughs off his hoodie and bends over in just his Manic Street Preachers shirt to soak up the tomato soup. 

When he comes back a minute later, he explains. “Our Tide? It was lavender scented. I had to pour all of it down the sink.”

Mikey’s pretty sure he sees Brendon twitch again, though there’s really no telling why. The soup spill is taken care of and it’s not like a box of washing powder can do much damage. It’s not dynamite. Frank twists in Brendon’s grip some but not enough to pull away before speaking again.

“She used to listen to Britney Spears, sing along while brushing her blond hair.”

Frank’s voice stops and Mikey doesn’t know if he cut himself off or if there just isn’t anything else to say. Blond hair is easy to deal with. All of them have dark hair and it’s too much work trying to bleach that shit blond anyways. The Britney Spears situation is also as easily remedied. Mikey’s one hundred percent sure there’s not a single song by her on their computer. Thank fuck the bitch didn’t like the Misfits or the Smashing Pumpkins. 

Crisis averted, Mikey doesn’t even think about moving in the direction of the computer to check about the music situation. Gerard stares at him channeling the thought of _Stop being a douche and check_ and Mikey just stares right back because. The Fuck? There’s no reason above or below ground either of them would have downloaded something by Britney Mother Fucking Spears and he’s never heard Brendon singing one of her songs. Disney, yeah. Britney, no. 

“So, who’s ass am I going to kick at Guitar Hero?” Conversation over, apparently. Mikey mentally shrugs. It’s enough for now. And hopefully Frank’s realised he can bring up other shit if he needs to.

“I wanna play the one with Queen,” Brendon answers.

“Bohemian Rhapsody’s on Warriors of Rock, everything else is on fifth edition.” Gerard replies, and goes to set the game up.

***

Gerard was going to go to bed at a decent hour, he really was. Mikey and Brendon work the same shift tomorrow, presuming that Ryan is more mentally stable and doesn’t make Brendon stay until late evening. He’s got a shitty half shift from noon to four, but getting up for the bus only lets him sleep in about an hour later, and buses have significantly less boyfriends, if by less he means zero. It’s the first time they’re leaving Frank alone, but Gerard’s not worried about it. If he was going to create havoc he already would have. 

He’s hesitating at the edge of the bed though, Mikey already hitting his pillow half a dozen times so it’s lumpy in all the right places. Gerard’s already in his one size too large sleeping boxers and a shirt worn so thin you could spit through it. He’s yawning. His mouth even tastes like the mint toothpaste Brendon bought, because secretly he agrees with Brendon that Mikey’s cinnamon flavoured stuff tastes like shit. Tooth brushing occurs about as frequently as hair brushing, or showering, so it’s saying something. But all preparation doesn’t matter, because Gerard’s got a brief glimpse of eerily flowered vines peering around the edges of his brain, and he’d really like to catch them before they flit away. On the other hand though, Mikey’s in bed, and Gerard’s libido is beginning to overpower his sense of morality when it comes to fucking with guests in the house. 

Mikey sees it though. He’s called it Gerard’s Look before, Gerard’s not sure if he’s right. He’s never really cared enough to look in the mirror while having an idea. “Go. You’re not gonna fall asleep even if you lay down, and you’ll just be pissy if you forget it by morning.”

Blessing given, Gerard rushes into his art room. For some reason he doesn’t want to use a canvas, which means no paints, so he goes for one of his sketch pads. The eight and a half by eleven pages are too small for the shear scope of the idea so he decides on the largest pad he has. It’ll work the best if he wants to do a single poster themed sketch instead of something paneled with several pages. Once he gets the page smoothed out just right, it doesn’t take long for him to start on one of the thick, leafy vines. Only with the way his art desk is positioned, he can’t get a good handle on the proper curves without standing and even then he can’t turn the pad around enough to draw at a satisfactory angle.

Gerard looks from his desk, to the floor, and back again before thinking _Fuck it_ and just dragging his sketch pad down to the carpet. After two more trips upward to raid his desk for the proper supplies, he tries to settle in. The problem is, the floor is cold, even through the rough paint covered carpeting. He remembers vaguely from science class -and second grade fire safety- that heat rises to the top, but his arms are no warmer than his ass. It’s too distracting. The chill is making his lines too clunky to even begin to imbue a proper puppeteer shape into the vines that will control their human puppet. And if he can’t get the posture right then he might as well not even put color to page. So he stands and moves swiftly to the thermostat and turns the air conditioning off. It’s June, it should be warm enough if the AC is off.

Soon enough the air around him isn’t cold enough for his hands to shake and he pretty much tips fingers first into the world splayed out in front of him. Vines creep and curl around the edges of the page, inviting and dangerous at the same time, flicks of lime, hunter, and mustard seed yellow giving the vines a slick presence of reality. Massive leaves roll up and fan out across the page, like flowers blossoming in a landscape about daisies. In the center of the quickly vanishing thick stock of sketch paper white is a person, face hidden partially by a tattered leaf, plump and leaking a milky substance, the person fighting to get free of it’s master’s hold any way possible. 

He’s shading in pearls of blood dripping and puddling in one of the leaves closest to the human puppet’s tightly grasped wrists when he’s pulled out of his happy head space by a knock that’s lightly followed by another. Frank and Brendon are sleeping, and Mikey never bothers him unless it’s an emergency, so Gerard puts his sketchbook aside and opens the door. Brendon is standing there, and belatedly that makes sense because Mikey’s not the knocking type. 

“What’s up?”

“I woke up. The house is ridiculously warm, by the way, there’s going to be a sweat stain the shape of my body on the couch in the morning. Not that anyone will care,” he finishes in a mutter. Gerard’s only a foot away and he totally heard, but he shrugs. Brendon’s right, neither he nor Mikey would care about sweat, and he’s betting Frank doesn’t either. 

“So you wanted to see if anyone else was awake?”

“Not really. I just went to the kitchen and chugged a can and a half of grape soda. Then I noticed the light under your door and had half a can left, and thought you might be thirsty?” Brendon holds out the previously unnoticed can. Gerard thinks for a moment before realising his throat is dry as fuck, and snatches the drink from Brendon, thanking him after he pounds it back.

“I guess I’ll go back to bed now. Or couch. I’ll go back to the couch.” he hesitates and Gerard pulls him into a hug. If he’s affectionate Brendon will be more likely to say whatever negative thing is on his mind, knowing that the person listening isn’t mad at him. Gerard hates it, a little bit, knows that Mikey finds it just as irritating, but Gerard’s always been of the mind that you work with what you have. “I like Frank, I do. Really. I want him to stay. And it’s not like I want you to convert your room into a bedroom again, it’s _your room_. But if he’s going to stay we need to get a pull out couch, or something. A futon, even. I don’t care, I just-”

“You know it’s not just my room. I mean, I don’t want to change it back into white walls and frilly bed linens-”

“You don’t even know how much I hate frilly bed linens. Seriously, Gerard.”

“But I’m just saying that it’s mine right now because Mikey doesn’t do art. He doesn’t paint or draw or any of it. This room is for anyone that wants to create something.” Brendon’s still on the other side of the door frame, and suddenly that pisses Gerard off. He grabs Brendon’s hand and pulls him into the room, trying to think of another time Brendon’s been inside and coming up empty. “Sit the fuck down, you’re going to draw something and it’s going to be brilliant. A motherfucking masterpiece.”

Brendon’s kneeling and about to slide to his ass when he stops and points to the wall. “is that. Gerard, I think you have icing. On your wall.”

Gerard glances at it, smiling. This year he managed to find a really nice bakery with bright orange icing, not the sickly peach that turns out when he tries to make his own icing for cupcakes. “Yep.”

“Okay, I’m going to rephrase. Why is there icing on your wall?”

“It was our anniversary two weeks ago. Well, sort of. Me and Mikey have been together forever, but we moved into the house June tenth, three years ago. The day we moved in the place was awful. It was soul crushingly bland, every fucking thing in the house was white or tan. Imagine, six rooms and a hallway of tan. I wanted to start painting, Mikey thought we should bring in our stuff from the U-Haul. I told him I wasn’t going to sleep one night in a tan house. He told me to stop being a drama queen and carry in the damn figurines. Instead I walked to the corner store, it’s not there anymore, obviously, but it was a decent place back then, and bought this six pack of cupcakes. When I got back I smeared the icing on the walls and suddenly there was yellow and orange everywhere. Me and Mikey don’t do flowers and bullshit, but it’s nice to reminisce like that.”

“Okay. But if it was two weeks ago why’s it still up now?”

“Well I’m hardly gonna wash a good memory off the wall, right? Now siddown, and shuddap, and draw something brilliant, and we’ll tack it up.” Gerard tugs Brendon into a safe position so he’s not crunching any pencil crayons beneath him and hands him a second sketch book. It’s about time Brendon learned what’s mine is yours and vice versa.

***

The sketch book feels heavy in his hands, The empty, blank page it’s turned to is staring starkly up at him and Brendon’s not sure what to do. He’s gotten comfortable enough with a camera that he can take pretty decent shots in his personal opinion, but drawing isn’t something he has much skill at. A stick figure or two chasing after each other across a barren landscape is probably the best he’s going to accomplish. 

It just means anything he tries is going to pale in comparison to anything Gerard would spend not even five minutes on. The scattered pages laying about would be testament enough if Brendon didn’t already know for a fact that Gee’s pretty fricking skilled with a pencil or even paints and chalks. It makes him feel insignificant. He shouldn’t be in here pretending.

The white page of the sketch book continues to mock him so he glances back up at the walls of the art room, carefully not glancing at the icing smear because looking at it makes him itch for a warm, wet cloth to wipe it off with and he _can’t_ do that. It would be wrong. Most of the walls are peppered with art work. Some are prints, others are weird art house posters. It’s this weird collage of stark inks and brilliant colors that flow into each other and then break away from each other like the Red Sea parting. Some of the prints are macabre, severed heads being held by their headless bodies while blood pools everywhere possible. One or two of the other prints are drawings that Brendon’s pretty sure could have come straight from the Lord of the Rings movies or the books at least. He could be wrong, his passing knowledge of Tolkien isn’t very filled in at the moment. 

Amongst the clutter of art and sketches there’s a solitary glossy picture print tacked to the wall. It causes Brendon to pause because he knows that print. Knows it well. He’d taken it in an abandoned junk yard, broken down cars scattered everywhere making his path a convoluted labyrinth to navigate. 

The edges of the print are unfocused in three of the corners and it’s hard to make out the blur of the city’s lights starting to pop across the horizon line in the distance as the sun sinks lower behind some of the heavily stacked junk. He remembers making the motion of his hand slow enough to catch the lights in a blur but not enough to smear the slowly fading golden glow of the sun’s dying light too badly. It’s still one of the prints he’ll pull up from his files when he needs to stare at something wistful and far reaching, because that’s how the picture feels when he looks at it, like the time between dusk and twilight is suspended in this never ending stretch of forever. 

Brendon wants to say _thank you_. But Gerard might not immediately know what he’s talking about, and that will break the moment of connection. Or he might start the junior Ryan persona where he scowls and Brendon can tell he dislikes his old boyfriends and how he thinks they conditioned him, and Brendon hates that, no matter who it comes from, because his choices are _his_ , and his gratitude for any positive acknowledgement comes from a much earlier time than boyfriend years. Or he might start talking about it with an artist’s eye, pointing out things he could have improved. Brendon doesn’t want any of that, so he doesn’t risk talking. He just puts Gerard’s sketchbook on the floor and waves his hand so all the tools around them roll away.

Carpet clear of anything he could ruin, Brendon gets back onto his knees for a moment, knee-walking the few feet until he can swing one leg over Gerard’s lap and settle on his folded knees. Every kiss, every touch says thank you in as much as his body can speak. He hopes-wishes-knows that in the month he’s been living with them they’ve come to understand his movements, and that Gerard will understand this. 

Gerard’s head thunks against the wall when Brendon pushes him down, they’re too close to the wall and have to wriggle towards the middle of the room. But it only delays them by moments, and then Brendon’s hands are at the hem of Gerard’s shirt, struggling to push it up as their full weight pins the back of it to the carpet. The seam rips instead of moving gracefully, and after years of Ryan normally Brendon would be horrified, but right now he couldn’t care less.

His hand is up the loose leg of Gerard’s boxers, tugging on the curly hair as Gerard groans into each pull, his other pinning Gerard’s right hand to the paint speckled carpet beside his hip. Brendon’s hard too, but he likes to tease himself, to stay on that edge as long as possible. Having two partners has only made that delicious wait longer, better. That’s when Mikey pipes up “do you know how loud you were being?”

Right. Gerard didn’t close the door before they sat down. All Brendon has to offer is “sorry?”

“Fuck that. Which one of you is sucking me off?”

***

Frank holds off for a good ten minutes when he wakes up to the sound of Mikey and Gerard having sex. It’s not upsetting, the way that heterosexual sex is, but it’s none of his business. Eventually though, his curiosity gets the better of him. In the ten days he’s been here he’s never seen them be affectionate. He just wants to see what they look like when they kiss. Judging by how loud they sound now, they forgot to close the bedroom door. If he just walks down the hall to the bathroom he can probably catch a glimpse.

Except he’s wrong, on multiple accounts. It’s not the bedroom, which Frank’s only seen the inside of a few times, bed taking up almost the entire room, clothes sprinkled like salt on the floor. Instead they’re in Gerard’s art room, and Frank could probably spend hours looking at the explosion of sketches and prints and paintings on the wall if there wasn’t something more interesting going on. They’re not sweetly kissing while fucking, which is all he really needs to see. Watching for a moment he can state conclusively that mouths are otherwise occupied. And it’s not Mikey and Gerard. It’s Brendon and Mikey, and Gerard is watching. Which is sort of confusing, if they’re the couple it should be Mikey sleeping on the couch, not Brendon. Pretty much the only thing Frank was correct about was the open door.

Once he’s looking Frank can’t really turn away. It’s been a long time since he’s cared enough to attempt sex. On heroin it takes forever to get hard and coming is no rush at all compared to the brilliance of freezing in one position, music floating through your ears. Shaun liked fucking because screwing some woman for three hours made him feel like a man, Frank never needed that shit. He doesn’t need it now either, doesn’t want to be fucking into Brendon as he’s sucking Mikey for multiple hours. He just wants to touch.

It’s not until Mikey comes, biting hard on the curve of his palm, that anyone notices him. It figures that it’s Mikey, he’s the sharpest of the three, in every sense of the term. “Look guys. Frank heard you loud bastards too.”

Brendon almost sprints away from Mikey at the comment, hand over his erection as he blushes. Frank can only see the back of Gerard, but he doesn’t seem happy either. It’s Mikey that continues to speak, "you know what? Screw it. We all fuck. We all fuck a lot. We know you're recovering from having an extended period of shitty times, and we're happy to help you out. But starting today we will be fucking. And if that's not cool you should start looking for a job so you can get a place or something." 

Gerard stretches out a bare leg, muscle in his ass flexing as he kicks Mikey in the hip, and Brendon is glaring, but Frank thinks Mikey’s got a point. Even if he was upset by them having sex, it’s not really his place to tell them they can’t; their house, their rules. Besides, it’s fucking hot, and sex is only upsetting if there are breasts or blond hair. He doesn’t remember most of it, but he remembers being trapped under her, ponytail fallen and rubbing against his neck, breasts against his chest. This room has three moderately smelly men, all brunet. It’s hardly the same.

“If I asked to join in would you still try to kick me out?”

It’s a ballsy question on his part, and Gerard seems to want clarification. He turns so he can watch Frank’s face and answers “depends. Are you asking because you like us and you want to? Or because you think you have to?”

Frank unzips and lets his erection speak for itself.

“Great. Brendon, suck him off, and then you can come.” Mikey looks at Frank, voice serious. “He’s using a condom. We all are, until you get results for STDs. Which you should go to check later today. Bus there while we’re at work.”

“Oh fuck me, work. If no one minds, I’m gonna make this quick. I have to go deal with Ryan in like six hours.”

Frank shrugs and just barely catches the condom Mikey miraculously has. “If it makes you feel better, addicts tend to come in about ten seconds after the withdrawal period. Or so I’ve heard, I never really went off the shit before.”

It should probably be a turn off to talk about, or at the very least, awkward as hell. But Brendon just smiles and says he’ll take it as a compliment, and rips the corner off the orange flavoured condom. Frank knew something was up with these guys the minute he saw them in the squat, he’s only more certain now. Murderers or not, all three of them are completely awesome. It’ll be easy to fall in love, if he isn’t already. It’s hard to tell, he’s never had the chance to feel it before.

***

Borders is the lowest ring of hell, random customers milling around way too early for a Saturday morning crowd. Mikey wants to clock out the moment he swipes his employee card in. He can’t though because today is a book signing for a local up and coming author and it’s _all hands on deck_ time according to Earl. Everyone on staff is having to work at least a partial shift today. Gerard’s up at the front, Earl having bustled into the back the moment he realized Mikey and Gerard had arrived so he could drag Gee up to the front because he needed someone to man the register. That means Mikey gets to take his time walking from the back of the store. Maybe if he’s lucky the aisles will morph into a labyrinth and he won’t have to deal with this giant bowl of suck. 

Instead, he’s accosted by a thirteen year old girl dressed in too much pink who wants to know where the romance section is so she can pick up something to read while she waits. When he walks her to the section, he ends up getting roped into finding Nora Roberts books for two old ladies who smell like makeup powder and stale coffee. All that accomplishes is that it makes him want to stalk over to the coffee portion of the store and get a fresh cup, but since he’s on shift he can’t. 

The joys of working the floor the day of a signing doesn’t get much better. Earl finds him reshelving a stack of books someone Oh So Helpfully left piled up twelve items high right in the middle of the healthy lifestyle section. So he gets to drag, one at a time, two heavy ass folding tables to the front of the store. Once they’re set up next to each other, he gets the privilege of cluelessly wandering through the stock piled up in the back room to find the five boxes of the local author’s newest book that Earl was supposed to have received several weeks ago via drop shipment. Without the books, there’s no reason for the tables, and it would be fucking stupid to have a book signing without having any of the newest issue on display and easily available for purchase. 

Hunting for the boxes turns into a bastardized version of an Easter egg hunt, each of the five boxes squirreled away in completely different places. One day Mikey’s going to figure out how Earl manages to do shit like this, but for now he’s just glad that all this searching shit is eating into his shift. The less time he has to stay out on the floor, the better. 

He’s just finished finally lugging all of the extra books to the table and is setting them up in the customary display order when a plump little hobbit of a lady pokes him in the side twice. Most of the customers have been staying away from him while he’s been dealing with the heavy ass boxes. He wouldn’t put it pass them to smell manual labour from a foot away and do their best to steer clear of it. So he’s not exactly sure what female Mini Me wants from him. She clears her throat and in a nasally voice asks him to rearrange the books. He just stares at her because Fuck That Shit, she’s not his boss. It’s then that he realizes who the woman is, the out of focus author picture on the back of one of the books staring up at him from his left hand. He’s not impressed. Unless Earl tells him to change it, he’s not going to. 

Which of course means fifteen minutes later he has to tear down his display and rebuild it while the woman smirks at him like she owns everything. Customers start to clue in to the fact that she’s shown up and they start to crowd the area. The moment he has the last book in place, he slips between a couple in the twenties and goes to pretend to help someone along the magazine wall. 

Her inspirational speech is fucking ridiculous. If he thought all authors were like this Mikey would give up reading in protest, and burn all the books in the living room at home as a sign of commitment. He’s pretty sure she thinks she invented the printing press just to get her shitty ass word-vomit all over the pretty in pink brains of her target demographic. The first chance he gets to pull out his phone without getting bitched at by an employee he texts Brendon **this is what S Meyer must b like w/ twatlight**.

Brendon’s out Urban Exploring, so it only takes him a minute to reply. **plz dont hang urself**

Mikey snorts and has the chance to answer **ezr said thn done** before Earl storms over and starts demanding that he help people get into a proper line for the signing. Crowd control. If he wanted to manage a crowd of fluff brained morons he would have gotten a security job for a Justin Bieber concert. This shift cannot end fast enough.

***

The shopping cart wobbles, one of the four wheels turning in a squeaky circle, before shuddering into a stall when the same wheel locks in place for two seconds too long. Gerard curses when he sort of gets smushed into long handle bar jutting out from the cart. It never fails, the moment he grabs a cart it’s always one with a defective wheel.

He lifts the bar of the cart quickly and lets the cart crash back down against the waxed tiles of the frozen foods section when he releases his grip. The sudden change in position knocks the wheel back in place and the cart starts to move at a slightly better pace, wonky wheel still spinning crazily but not badly enough to freeze in place again. 

Gerard manoeuvres the cart closer to his brother, who’s leaning in one of the open coolers to drag out what could possibly be considered the frozen food version of the holy grail. Frozen pizza isn’t exactly delivery but it’s still better than the alternative. Plus if they pack the freezer at home full of pizza, ice cream, and hot pockets then there’ll be no room for anything like frozen vegetables or meats. It’s not that he’s against Brendon cooking what he calls _real food_. It’s just, pizza is an important dietary need and Gerard’s so used to it by now that he’d rather not change things up too much. Mikey had the bright idea of the two of them grabbing some food after work so they could stock up on things Brendon won’t remember to buy.

Once they have several different flavours of pudding cup packs chilling near the pizzas, he pushes the cart towards the check out. The wheel tries to stick again and instead of stalling the cart it swerves into a display of crackers. Luckily, none of the packets plummet out of the display. The check out lady has bleached white hair pulled into a bun, and insists on scanning each of the pizzas even after Gerard helpfully informs her there are ten. They don’t bother to buy bags, Mikey grabbing the cardboard stack and pinning it between hands and chin, Gerard holding the rest of the items to his chest. If they both walk slowly they can get to the car without dropping everything. It’s one of the benefits of Cheetos over eggs, even if they do drop the package it won’t matter. Good tasting food is invariably more resilient than health food. 

Gerard’s just pulling out of the parking lot when his phone goes off. Mikey jams his hand into the pocket of his jeans and answers it for him. If it’s work there’s no doubt that Mikey will tell the caller to fuck off, they’re not taking another half shift for the evening. There are plans in the Way house; teaching Frank DnD, and sex, and dinner of Pringles and Rocky Road, and more sex, and a movie, and sex and then bed. 

Luckily for the caller -and probably technically for them, as no one wants another Respect and Sensitivity workshop- it’s not Vanessa trying to get out of her shift so she can spend another evening teasing her fiancée. Gerard nearly shit a brick the first time he heard her go on about no sex until marriage, and the look on Mikey’s face was priceless. She’s nice to them, but Gerard and Mikey can’t really forgive her for the cruelty towards her supposed loved one. Instead it’s just Brendon, and from the directions Mikey’s feeding him Gerard can only guess he missed a bus while exploring and wants to be picked up. Which sort of ruins the stealth part of the plan where they smuggle all the decent food into the fridge and see how long it takes Brendon to notice, but it’s not like Gerard’s going to leave him abandoned, fuck knows where, with a five hundred dollar camera. 

Brendon doesn’t seem upset when he climbs into the back, he just sighs and says something about everything melting before they get home, and the next time bring a beach cooler with them. Gerard can say with certainty that there’s nothing beach related in the house, but cranks up the air conditioning, because it would be really shitty if Brendon was right and everything got ruined before they could eat it. To come so close to pizza and be denied would be simple cruelty. 

Gerard momentarily double parks and lets the boys out to carry the shit inside, then drives halfway down the street for a parking spot. Frank’s playing Left 4 Dead when Gerard finally finishes tromping across the yards and gets inside, kicking his shoes in the general direction of the closet. Any day now Brendon’s going to try to institute some sort of shoe system, but until that day Gerard’s going to let them lie where they fall. Gerard’s momentarily entranced by Frank killing one of the fat exploding zombies, and then he notices. All eight original 1987 collector plates are missing from the mantel. Han Solo, R2-D2 and Wicket, Luke and Darth, Leia, AT-ATs, Yoda, Space Battle, and Crew; they’re all missing.

If someone had broken in to steal them, surely there would be holes in the drywall from gun shots. Frank would be beaten, possibly hospitalised from the brutality. There’s only one explanation, and Gerard hates it but time counts in this sort of situation. It’s like hostages or kidnapping, every moment the cops have to trace the movement is helpful. “Where’d they go!”

“What?”

“Tell me you didn’t sell them for heroin!” Gerard knows he did, there’s no other possibility. 

Frank freezes with the controller in his hand, face pulled into a scowl. “Sell _what_?” Gerard flings an arm towards the empty mantel. “Really? What kind of moron would hock dinnerware for H? I put them with the rest of the plates.”

“Dinnerware! Those weren’t _dinnerware_!” Vintage plates like that cost Mikey over two hundred dollars when he got his first paper route. Who in their right mind could drip sauce onto Han Solo’s face! 

Brendon’s laughing loudly in the hallway at the exchange, which Gerard doesn’t understand but finds moderately offensive. He continues laughing as Gerard and Mikey shove past him to get into the kitchen. Mikey begins opening the drawers, starting with the one under the microwave, while Gerard checks the drawer under the stove. Brendon manages to stifle himself long enough to say “this is proof you have no idea what a kitchen is,” before he giggles again. 

Gerard opens the fridge so he can stand on the middle shelf, clinging to the handle of the freezer with one hand as he stretches to open the cupboard over the fridge with his other. He hears Brendon snort and ask ‘seriously’, but doesn’t bother to reply. The plates aren’t in there either. 

“Guys, stop. You’re going to kill yourselves, stop.” Gerard hops out of the fridge, kneeing something over in the process. He feels a wet splash against his leg and slams the door quickly before Brendon has a chance to see and get upset. 

“Plates can generally be found in the plate cupboard,” he says with a smile, and opens a cupboard at random. Sure enough there are eight gold rimmed plates stacked up. Brendon pulls them out almost cavalierly, and Gerard can’t stop himself from rushing forward and putting his hands under Brendon’s in case he drops them. Mikey hovers carefully beside him, a failsafe in case they both fail. 

Frank’s still in the living room, staring at the primary coloured buttons. Brendon props each plate against the brick and when he finishes Mikey takes his place to put them in proper order. “Look, I’m sorry, alright? I just figured plates on the fireplace was something Brendon hadn’t had time to fix up yet, like the stains on the couch.”

Brendon makes a squawking noise and Gerard knows he’s about to say something about all the different cleaners he’s tried, and how the couch is a lost cause, it’s not his fault. Gerard speaks first, because his is more important than Brendon’s honour. Frank looks hurt, and Gerard can still remember going back to Borders the week after he detoxed and all the staff staring at him, and James finally letting him know Earl had warned them he might try to drink the hand sanitizer for its alcohol content. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not once an addict, always an addict. You’ve been doing really fucking great. It’s just, Mikey got those when he was ten.”

“Star Wars is sort of a thing with them,” Brendon adds.

“I’ve heard of it, never watched it. Any good?”

Gerard thinks swooning is probably the wrong word, but a feeling of _wrong wrong wrong bad_ does come over him. He turns to Mikey, who will understand. Mikey’s already reaching for A New Hope. In a short fourteen hours all will be right with the world.

***

His pocket buzzes, tiny twitches vibrating from his pocket, so Brendon squirms enough to pull his phone back out. Perhaps it was stupid of him to put it away fifteen minutes ago and even the fifteen minutes before that and also the twenty minutes before that. Apparently he can’t have an actual off day today without Ryan texting him things like **she doesn’t understand me** or **could she get any more useless**.

This isn’t the first time he’s seen a Star Wars movie. It’s definitely the first time he’s been involved in a marathon watching of any of them though. And while it’s not exactly his thing, the movies aren’t bad. The themes are pretty solid and the plot isn’t bad. Plus it’s interesting once you realize that Electric Light and Magic was formed by George Lucas as part of his special effects team so Star Wars could exist. Then later on a branch of ILM broke off and became Pixar. There’s no way Brendon could not remember that tidbit of knowledge. So he’ll give Lucas that, even if the guy still can’t write plausible dialogue to keep him afloat.

AT-ATs thunder across the tv screen, like a herd of massive, mechanical elephants and the stark winterized world of Hoth casts the living room in the glow of white and metallic blue. Brendon flips open his phone and presses read now so he can figure out what Ryan wants now. 

If it wasn’t for Mikey texting through most of A New Hope, he’d feel bad about reading Ryan’s texts. Not paying attention to Ryan is like failing to notice the angry swarm of bees trying to ambush Pooh after he tries to steal hunny. It’s not exactly possible. **she called my velour velvet** Oh for the love of God. Brendon’s perfectly aware that Ryan is high maintenance, and sometimes it gets a bit much, but Clarissa really shouldn’t have done that. Ryan’s an atheist, always the counter to Brendon’s parents before all the shit went down and Brendon had to pick a side, but he once said his gods are the higher powers of velour and strong suit wool, and he’d seemed serious. He’s got no idea if she made an honest mistake, or if she did it to piss him off. Either way it’s a bad, bad thing.

It’s hardly a surprise when his phone rings minutes later. It’s a tossup as to whether it’s going to be Ryan or Clarissa, and it doesn’t much matter, Brendon still has to stand and take it in the guest room so it doesn’t bother the guys.

He answers without looking. It’s Clarissa. “You need to take over.”

“I know he can get trying but-”

“Brendon, seriously. I cannot handle this right now.”

“You only work one day a week, this is my day off and-”

“If you don’t intervene I’m going to hang him with his own tape measure. You might think I’m joking, but I’m not. There are no exposed beams in the ceiling but if I climb to the highest shelf of bolts, if I tie it to one of the more protruding rolls I-”

Brendon slowly presses his face against the seafoam and dark cyan pinstriped wall. He was in the same position last night, only Frank was behind him, dick teasing against his asshole, Mikey telling them to wait until they couldn’t stand it any longer. He’d rather hoped for the same thing tonight, instead of dealing with Ryan’s shit. “Fine. I’m leaving now, I’ll be there as soon as I can.” 

She hangs up before he can change his mind, and he takes one more breath against the warming drywall before going back to the living room. Gerard’s paused Empire Strikes back, a move which is probably driving him up the wall. “I’m really sorry, I have to go to work. Ryan’s being a diva, worse than normal, and Clarissa’s threatening to kill him.”

“Hypothetically?” Mikey asks blandly, not caring enough to look up from his phone. Frank on the other hand looks fascinated, like he wonders if every single person Brendon knows does kill people.

“Yeah, I think. But if she quits I won’t get any days off, ever, which means I need to figure out what the hell’s wrong before she does.”

“Do you want us to keep the movie paused until you get back?” It looks like it physically pains Gerard to say it, which makes Brendon want to hug him, or kiss him, or have really awesome sex in the middle of the living room that will make him forget how gross the carpet still is. But hopefully he can get home in time that he can still do all of it before they need to go to bed. Well, except for Frank, but he likes to snuggle with them for a bit before he gets back up to read or watch tv. Apparently it takes a good six months for an ex-junkie’s sleep patterns to get back to normal, and that’s one of the major reasons people start using again. 

Brendon shakes his head and grabs the keys. It’s a pretty short drive to The Weather Today, but it’s long enough to find out what the problem is. On the website there are three different ways you can get clothing. You can purchase an already made item with the inspirational photograph included. You can search by photograph and read what article Ryan would be willing to make to go along with that photo. Or you can go into the gallery of undecided photos and email with specific ideas. The latter always bring in the most revenue, but they’re also the most stressful garments for Ryan to sew, as ‘part of his creative psyche rebels against being told what to create’. Learning from Clarissa that Ryan accepted not two but _seven_ of the third type makes Ryan being the biggest bastard make sense.

Clarissa doesn’t leave when he arrives, which makes things easier. They can take turns dealing with Ryan and his mad fabric choices and his attaching potential designs to the wall -a stressed Ryan should never be given a staplegun- and being relieved to dealing with a potential customer in the front. Brendon hasn’t been in on Saturday in a while, but he’s sure Saturdays weren’t this busy before Clarissa. 

Still, he’s got time to make a call that he’s been thinking about for a while now. He can’t ask when he’s around the guys, which is all the time. And better to do it now when Ryan is heavily distracted than on a Monday afternoon when there’s shit all to do. On his rush out the door he forgot to grab his charger, and he was inside Weather for about five minutes when it conked out, halfway through a text to Mikey about arriving safely, now if only he could survive Ryan. Which means Brendon’s got no choice but to make the call on the work phone.

“Hey, Jon?”

“Brendon. Man, it’s been forever since I heard your voice. I was trolling Weather’s website though, you’ve gotten really fucking good. Tom likes them too, though he had this question about filters. Wanna talk to him for a sec?”

The idea of talking to Tom isn’t as upsetting as it should be. It isn’t really upsetting at all, actually. Which he knows is because of his boys, how can he long for an ex when he has the three best guys in the world? That’s what he needs to talk about, and Jon’s the only one he knows that could be some help. “I need to ask you a question about relationships.”

“Tell me you didn’t get back with Phil. Because there’s loving you, and then there’s loving you too fucking much, and the hiding in your closet thing really put him in category two, you know?”

Brendon smiles to himself. Jon sort of sounds like a far saner version of Ryan. “No, I didn’t. I’m just. I’m sort of in an alternative relationship right now and-”

“Brendon, are you dating a girl? Because that’s okay, you know. Some people are bi. Shit, probably most people are bi, with a preference towards one or-”

He snorts at the mental image of Mikey dressed up like a girl. And then the image stays in his brain and it’s actually not so much funny as really extremely hot. But he’s not ready for that kind of conversation, especially not over the phone, at work, so he moves onto the important part. “Ryan hasn’t met them, and I really want him to, but I don’t know what I should do. See, I’m sort of in love with three guys. And. Uh. I mean, what do you think? Should I tell him when I bring him to the house? Or should I let him think I’m only dating one of them, and the other two are each other’s boyfriends?”

“You’re living and having sex with three guys. Brendon, Jesus Christ. I honestly have no clue what to- I just never expected that sort of thing- From you of all people. I mean-”

“Brendon! Who are you talking to! You don’t chat up the customers, you sell things to them!” 

Brendon doesn’t even mutter sorry into the phone, just hangs up and scurries in the opposite direction. It’s too late, Ryan’s stalking out of the back room and when he sees the cord of the phone still swinging he narrows his eyes and picks it up and presses redial. Brendon squints his eyes shut, he can’t help it, but even though the blackness he can see the entire world imploding as Jon answers. Ryan makes a bestial noise, and Brendon opens his eyes just in time to see Ryan literally throwing the receiver at the base. The top half of the casing breaks off and falls to the floor only moments before the rest of the phone plummets towards the ground, spinning crazily.

“There! Now you cannot speak to him again. I don’t know how many times we have to go over this Brendon, before you understand. He’s Evil and Must Be Stopped, he’ll hurt you, he’ll corrupt you, I know you’re falling back in love and don’t see it but you have to. You _must_ , or this will only go the way of Devon or Brodie or Phil! Honestly, it’s like talking to a brick wall!”

That’s rich. It’s so fucking rich that Brendon can barely hold in the laughter. But he’s seen Ryan in _I have too many pieces, one slight mental strain will break me completely_ mode before. The night before his first show he ran out of Kleenex and tried to break into his neighbour’s apartment to get some. As annoying is as it, it’s probably best for all concerned if he lets Ryan scream himself into a stupor rather than argue with him.

Twenty five minutes later he’s not so sure. Ryan’s having a heartfelt conversation with a fourteen year old girl who’s clearly not going to be buying anything about how in her future love endeavours she must shun her exs with extreme hostility, otherwise you end up falling in love for a second time with a piece of COMPLETE WHORESCUM. Brendon cannot wait until six.

***

Frank’s curled up next to Gerard on the couch. So far, they’re three movies into an epic Star Wars watching spree. Apparently the storyline is carried through six films. He’s been enjoying himself. Occasionally, Gee will pause one of the films to complain about the differences between the remastered films of the nineties, the remastered updated ones of the two thousands, and the originals, which are hard to find and not on dvd. Frank doesn’t really understand why there’s a problem because it’s the director’s vision and if he wants to _fix_ things then that’s his choice. 

The weird sounding bounty hunter walks up to the hunk of stone or metal Han Solo’s trapped in- Frank’s not exactly sure what carbonite is supposed to be even with Gerard and Mikey trying to explain it to him- and the front door opens before closing again. Brendon’s back but Frank just keeps watching because he’s curious as to why the bounty hunter who brought Chewie in to Jabba would want to go up to the Han Solo wall display. 

Brown hair spills out from under the helmet when the bounty hunter pulls it off. Of course the bounty hunter is really Leia, who’s come to save Han. It also makes the whole Lando in disguise moment much more understandable. Frank can’t pay attention though because suddenly it’s like he’s not here anymore. The smell of flowers, sweet and sun kissed, sort of hangs in the air.

He tries to burrow into Gerard’s side, partially to remind himself of where he is and partially to block out the scent. Mikey and Gerard don’t take showers as regularly as some people do, so he should be able to overpower the flower smell, but he somehow he can’t shake it.

The tv is still in his line of sight, yet he’s no longer seeing anything happening across the screen. Blond hair and the blur of a pink tank, too close for him to really make out the picture flat ironed to the center of the shirt is all his vision is letting him notice. Frank doesn’t realize he’s gotten up until he’s already across the living room and his fingers curl around the cool handle of the front door. 

He can’t do this. He can’t remember this, can’t remember how wrong and unfair it was and how no one believed him because girls can’t do that to boys. Brendon killed Jeff but there have to be other dealers, all he has to do is bus to the right area of LA. 

Then there’s hand on his shoulder and Frank jerks away instinctively, but the owner of it is talking, and Frank does his best to focus. Even if he can’t see or smell anything but badness, he can maybe hear. It might be okay, the grip is a lot stronger than it used to be, the fingers feel longer.

“-really sorry. He didn’t realise, dumb bastard. But he’s showering now, and Gee’s spraying Pine Sol all over the coffee table and end tables, so soon the room will be like Christmas, not anything bad.”

“Everything’s bad,” Frank says faintly. That much he knows. Whenever he almost forgets, something like this reminds him.

“Not true. And you don’t need to go shoot up every time you feel like this, okay? You just need to tell me or Gee or Brendon, and we’ll find someone that’ll help you out.”

They stand in front of the door for some time, Frank’s not sure how long. He’s still trying not to concentrate too hard on his surroundings just to be safe. Eventually Gerard walks up. A portion of his shirt is damp with what must be the Pine Sol he was using because it’s like a whole forest just decided to creep up to them. Frank’ll take the scent of Smokey the Bear’s home any day to the alternative. 

After a couple of more minutes, Brendon shows up in clean clothes, cards fingers through his still wet hair so the mess doesn’t fall into his eyes. He looks unhappy and sad but before Frank can do anything about it Mikey opens the front door and says they’re all going out for a bit.

It doesn’t take long to get to the car. Frank claims shot gun and Mikey just shrugs instead of trying to dislodge him from the passenger side seat. He goes around to the front of the car and climbs in before Brendon does, scooting over until he’s behind Frank. Brendon slides in and the driver’s seat makes a thunk when it pops back into position. Gerard climbs in and shuts the driver’s side door before starting the car. 

Frank’s not sure exactly what is supposed to happen now. They just aimlessly drive around for maybe a half an hour. Then Gerard turns to him and says “you said blond, right?” Frank shudders, an image of it popping into his mind before he can force it away. “Look, at the bus stop. She close enough?”

Substitute the clunky over the ear headphones with earbuds, and it could be a twin. His silence must speak for him, because Gerard’s slowing the car and Mikey’s arm snakes between the edge of the seat to unbuckle his seat belt. “From this moment on, she’s her. Everything you’ve ever wanted to do, go get it done. We’ll circle the block.”

Brendon pipes up “and don’t let her scream. Learned that lesson the hard way.”

Frank doesn’t really hear the sound of the car driving away. Instead it’s the plastic voice of Baby One More Time running through his head as he crosses the street. He picks up speed, angling and crouching as he goes, until he’s barrelling into her chest with his shoulder. She stumbles back and crashes to the ground, pretty neon blue tights ripping on the sidewalk. He climbs on top of her and her body is twisting and it feels the same, and she’s screaming and it sounds the same, and her hair is whipping his face and it’s the same and her hands are on his shoulders and it’s the same, and Frank knows that _no, this will not be the same_. So he grabs her head and smashes it against the sidewalk, and her screaming tapers off, and he smashes again, and again, and he doesn’t stop until Mikey’s shouting out the open window that it’s time to get back into the car.

There’s a blanket on the passenger’s seat, and it starts to soak up the parts of her he’s dripping with. He vaguely hears Mikey saying something about having to burn everything, but doesn’t really pay attention. For the first time in his life, or at least the first time since her, he feels like things are fair. It’s a good feeling.


	8. Chapter 8

Mikey really likes Gerard’s newest idea for a drawing series. He likes anything that makes Gerard happy, even if it’s weird shit like boy octopus hybrids, but this is far above and beyond that. His idea is to create a drawn photo album of their relationship, and for the last week he’s randomly requested Frank to freeze in the middle of fingering Brendon, or Mikey’s hand to still around Frank’s bicep as he passes him in the hallway.

Right now Frank is straddling his lap, steadying himself with a hand braced against the wall. Frank’s mouth still tastes like marble milk, not enough in the fridge for a full glass of skim or chocolate. Gerard’s sketch book is angled up, away from them, but Mikey can almost guarantee he’s drawing where the lines of their legs intersect. It’s the kind of thing that would interest him, and could still be submittable for a portfolio when he goes back to school in a few weeks. 

That’s when Brendon storms in, waving something covered in black polka-dots. “I don’t know if you’ve heard? But people have already invented penicillin. So, I dunno. If you want to _not_ reinvent the wheel? That would be awesome.”

Frank pulls his head back and twists to look. “What is that?”

“It _was_ a shower cap, before it spent, what, six months in the vanity?”

Gerard looks up from his sketch book and asks “A vanity? Are you sure? We’re not really the kind of guys that would own something called a vanity, Bren.”

Mikey snickers. He knows damn well what a vanity is, but wants to see how Brendon’s going to handle that. 

“The cupboard where the sink goes, Gerard. And that’s not the point. The point is, I get that you guys don’t clean, you’re perfectly happy living in your own squalor. Which normally I’m fine with. But it would be really super awesome if you could not let things get covered in mold. We’re not high schoolers, we don’t own petri dishes, and we don’t need to reenact the nineteenth century.”

Mikey smirks and stands as Frank gets off and skitters to poke at the spotted plastic. “I’ll be your Napoleon.”

It takes Brendon a minute to snap out of the mental image -role playing is obviously something Mikey’s going to have to look into- and reply with “that’s not fair! You can’t just turn every complaint I have into sex!”

Mikey disagrees, but Gerard says it for him. “I bet the next five concerns you have, Mikey can turn into an orgasm. We should mark them on the calendar.”

“If you mean the calendar from two thousand seven, I tossed it!”

“I’ll toss anything you want.”

“That’s one.”

“That didn’t count! That was just a line, he didn’t get me off.” Brendon flushes after he says it, realising he’s made a mistake, but it’s too late. It’s clearly a challenge, and Mikey doesn’t back down from sex related challenges.

***

For someone that hasn’t had sex for years -probably. No one’s asked, and Gerard can’t imagine a reason why anyone would, they’re all very good at not bringing up the past- Frank is really good at fucking. It’s better when he gets off first, the first time around it only takes a few strokes, not even enough that you could call it a handjob. But he recovers quickly, probably as quickly as is physically possible, and after taking the edge off he’s set for an intense second round.

Gerard should probably be happy that the window in the kitchen has curtains to prevent evil sunlight from gnawing at them in the morning. To be honest though, he couldn’t care less if his neighbours saw him on his hands and knees, Frank pistoning into him. It’s the best possible position to watch what Mikey’s doing to Brendon, and who wants to bother to waste the time it would take to move to the bedroom? 

Brendon’s hands spasm around the edge of the table, rap of fingertips on wood hardly audible over the sounds of four different speeds and tones of pants in the room. Three, really, it’s impossible to tell if Mikey is panting when his face is buried in Brendon’s ass. Gerard’s not entirely sure why Brendon is twitching so much, he should have expected as much. Mikey even said _it’s not called tossing the calendar, Bee, it’s tossing the salad, don’t you know your colloquialisms?_ when his hands moved to Brendon’s zipper. He couldn’t have made it any clearer.

“See if you can hold it, Bren,” Frank calls out. It would be a cruel request, except everyone in the room knows Brendon loves it. They’ve all got their kinks, and not coming is Brendon’s.

Gerard’s not surprised when he comes first. His orgasm hits hard, making all his nerves sear. After a moment his muscles give up, and he falls to the linoleum, abdomen slipping against his pool of come. Frank follows him down, not quite ready to give up fucking him yet. His movements are slower though, like Frank recognises even in his haze that this isn’t the most comfortable thing for him. The tenderness is different than he ever had with Mikey. Not better, just different. It’s nice.

***

Brendon really needs to shower. And scrub the kitchen floor. And the underside of the table. All that can wait for a bit though, because what he really needs to do is figure out what he’s going to do. He can’t keep hiding Mikey, Gerard, and Frank from Ryan. He’s too happy and either he’s going to have to come up with something or have Ryan figure it out for himself. However, there’s no telling what conclusions Ryan’ll jump to so Brendon needs to come up with a good plan of action. He doesn’t want to have to listen to Ryan rant about him living in a harem or whatever random thing he can think of that will end up having some sort of negative meaning wrapped around it.

The bathroom siren calls to him and he almost trips over his still pulled down jeans when he starts in the direction of the hallway. Everyone else has already stumbled off in the direction of the living room. It’s tempting to just follow them and cuddle but he’s gross and needs some time to think. 

He grabs the closest belt loop he can reach of his pants and drags them back up his legs. The last thing he wants right now is to fall and bash his head against the kitchen tiles. Blood isn’t supposed to be easy to clean once it dries. 

His pants slip some in his grip when he stumbles into the bathroom and the fingers of his left hand poke into something solid shifting about in one of his pockets. Of course his phone’s still somehow in his pants. He thinks about calling someone and asking for advice, but there’s not anyone he can think of. His phone does have internet though, and a Facebook application. 

Asking Spencer what to do might not be the best idea Brendon’s ever had. But Spencer’s know Ryan forever and days before that. If anyone might be able to give him a clue as to what he can do perhaps Spencer can.

**What do you think will happen if I tell Ryan I'm dating three guys and we're all living together in a house of sex?  
Brendon**

He turns the faucet rather than wait for an answer. He doesn’t know if Spencer is working, or if it’s possible to bring out his phone for clandestine texting if he is. It could be days. He’s almost hoping it _is_ days, to give him a bit more stalling time. But he’s got no such luck. By the time he’s fixing the part in his wet hair so it’ll dry in place, Spencer has written back. 

I AM DELETING THIS PM. WE NEVER HAD THIS CONVERSATION. RYAN IS NEVER TOLD YOU TOLD ME FIRST. IF HE SHAVES MY BEARD OFF I WILL CUT OFF HIS TOES AND THEN WE WON'T BE BEST FRIENDS ANYMORE AND IT'LL BE SAD.

A stray drop of water splats against the surface of the phone’s screen and Brendon grabs a corner of the towel so he can wipe the wetness away. He’s not exactly surprised by Spencer’s response even if he wasn’t expecting the whole cutting off toes bit. But that just means he’s back to square one which is continuing to do what he’s been doing. 

Hiding, though, can’t be his continued course of action. Ryan’s been his best friend since he left home, if not before then. He’s family and Brendon’s lying to him by not telling him. Not to mention the fact that by keeping this secret, it’s almost as if he’s ashamed of what he has with his guys. That couldn’t be farther from truth. Brendon’s pretty sure he’s finally found that relationship everyone longs for. The one that’s supposed to be it for him. He can envision a million and one negative outcomes to telling Ryan all he likes but none of those scenarios can change the fact that he’s happy.

***

Frank wakes up with a start. He doesn’t even remember feeling sleepy, never mind deciding to give in to exhaustion.

It’s unsettling to fall asleep in random places at random times. It makes sense, all the research he’s found says he’s not going to be getting a full night for a long time. Most nights he whittles away the hours listening to music -he’s still got his discman, but Mikey’s iPod is ridiculously extensive- drifting off for a few songs before waking again. He always sleeps on the edge of the king mattress so he can slip away without waking them if laying still gets to him too badly. 

With not sleeping at night his body forces him to crash during the day. It’s the primary reason he hasn’t thought about getting a job yet. Working with what’s essentially a sleep disorder would have him slumping onto the fry table and burning away half his face, or getting his register robbed blind. 

He can’t sleep, and he can’t pay for his own things, and there are a lot of things his stomach still can’t handle eating. And then there’s the panic attacks, when the wrong look of a main character comes on tv, or when something smells too pretty, or when nineties music that’s not Nirvana comes on. They’re worse than they’ve ever been, and while that makes sense, as it’s the first time since junior high that he’s been sober, it still sucks.

Frank starts to sit up. There’s still light leeching through the curtains, whoever’s lap he’s resting on probably has something better to do with their life that be a pillow for an ex-junkie. Gerard’s hand stops him, gentle on his upper arm before moving so his fingers scritch against his scalp. “Go back to sleep.”

It happens every time. He starts to feel broken, or useless, or worthless, knowing himself for what he really is. Then one of them does something, as simple as sharing a cigarette or smiling, and Frank knows he can’t be all bad. Not if they like him.

***

Mikey hates lugging the display tables from the back. It’s not that any of them are too heavy. More like they’re bulky as fuck and unusually long ass rectangular strips of fake wood that take time to move about. If he’s not careful he ends up ramming into shelving or at least one of the other display tables that are set up for seasonal items and various other impulse knick-nacks. Earl’s too much of a frugal ass to actually order rounder tables that they could roll between the rows of bookshelves like the ones other stores use. It doesn’t matter, just means that Mikey gets to be the lucky bastard who has to fetch another table when it’s decided they need one more display of book lights, or those tiny pocket books only cheap idiots and soccer moms buy.

He’s in the process of smoothing one of the generic tablecloths across the surface of the table, once he has it unfolded and sitting upright, when he hears the chime at the front announce someone walking in. He doesn’t look up and say hi because Gee should be around somewhere up front and it’s his responsibility to greet customers. No one says anything, which means his brother is probably either putting up unwanted books or helping some one find something, so it’s up to him. He doesn’t care, but if it’s a secret shopper someone needs to be pleasant or they’re all fucked. The last thing Mikey wants to do is attend another ‘treating customers appropriately’ seminar. 

Mikey straightens up in time to notice a guy in a dark hoodie approach him. The hood is pulled tight to his face, sunglasses hiding what little of the upper half is showing. He also reeks, cologne radiating off him like he’s role-playing PigPen from Peanuts. “Is there something I can help you find?”

“Uh, Gerard, I guess?”

“Oh, shit. Frankie?” It’s a stupid thing to be asking, he knows it’s him. Come to think of it, he even recognises the hoodie from the back of Gerard’s closet. It’s just impossible. He can’t be here. How the fuck did he even make it? They have the car, all of them working morning shift, and as far as Mikey knows Frank doesn’t have a licence anyway.

“Hi. I missed you. And Gerard. And Brendon. I thought we could have lunch together. It’s almost one, when is your lunch break?”

“It’s now.” It’s technically not, but for once in his life Earl can suck it. If Frank has to spend an hour in Borders something will fuck him up, regardless of measures to protect sight and smell. He pulls out his phone and quickly texts **romantc lnch. esc to fd crt asap.**

It takes a bit of stealth, but he manages to make his way to the back of the store to swipe his time card without any customer or employee seeing him. The short walk to the food court is occupied with switching the settings on his phone so it reads an hour later. If Earl notices his absence ‘I thought it was one’ will be a feeble excuse, but it’s better than nothing.

Gerard shows up maybe five minutes later. Mikey’s pretty sure his brother snagged one of the evening cashiers as they came in from the back to cover the front so he could clock out for an early lunch. They have a silent conversation about taking lunch early and Mikey looks over to where Frank is finding a good table for them that will keep them away from anything problematic. It’s best to let him choose because Frank knows what he can handle better than any of them could. The moment his brother sees Frank he nods and sort of relaxes at Mikey’s side happily.

Once they have a table, Brendon skids to a stop next to them and drops down into one of the plastic chairs. He’s sweating some but smiles wider the moment he notices Frank’s with them and pulls Frank down to sit next to him. That leaves Mikey and Gerard to get food. At least this way there’s no worries of some random stranger brushing too close to Frank in line or anyone trying to steal chairs from their table. Two people are better at guarding chairs than one.

Four sets of fries, four cokes, three hamburgers, a set of onion rings and a salad later they’re all digging in. It sounds condescending to say they’re really proud of Frank, but that doesn’t seem to stop Brendon, and Gerard takes a moment to bend over the table to hug him, strings of his hastily thrown on, uniform disguising hoodie dangling dangerously close to the little paper cups of ketchup. For his part, Mikey just rubs his foot against the inside of Frank’s thigh. Frank’ll know what it means.

“A Ha!” 

Mikey nearly slips off the easily cleaned plastic chair as someone shouts directly behind him. Instinct says cop, says run, says ohfuckohfuckohfuck, but the rational part of his brain reminds him cops are unlikely to scream ‘a ha’ before arresting someone. Brendon looks up and pales faster than he did with Eddie, so Mikey has to turn around and see what’s going on.

It’s a tall skinny guy, wearing a wine coloured vest with gold embroidery, bright yellow dress shirt underneath, cufflinks awkwardly attached at sleeves that are rolled up to the elbow. Mikey can’t see the bottom half the way he’s twisted, but it’s probably just as flamboyant. “You’re his harem, aren’t you!”

“Sweet fucking Jesus,” Brendon mutters. Mikey can’t remember the last time he heard Brendon swear.

“Which one of you is Tom?” he doesn’t wait for any of them to answer that none of them are, just goes on. “Let me guess, he’s at home, because he’s the master wife. You’re all just on call, in case his rampant need for attention isn’t satisfied! Brendon, you can do so much better than this, being just another groupie. Do you want to have sex with Spencer? Spencer would be perfect for you!”

Gerard and Frank don’t seem very impressed with the fashionista’s suggestion. Before they have a chance to say something though, Brendon speaks. “Spencer’s straight.”

“That’s completely irrelevant!”

“No, uh, it’s actually really super relevant.” 

“I am not having this conversation here. There is a man three tables over wearing a Tommy Hilfiger shirt, Brendon. And I will probably get eye syphilis from Jon’s harem looking at me. You better be using condoms, Brendon Boyd Urie. I will see you at The Weather Today.” With that the crazy fashionista stalks off. When he gets far enough away Mikey can see he’s wearing purple cowboy boots.

“Oh my fucking gooood.” Mikey looks back to Brendon in time to see him push the tray to the side and thump his head into the table. “Can one of you contact one of your old friends and see if someone wants to shoot me in the face so I don’t have to go back to work?”

Gerard shrugs. “Bert liked guns, but he gave it up. For good. Fell in love, with a cop of all things, and decided love was more important.”

“Why don’t you just not go back to work?” Frank suggests. Mikey shrugs his agreement. It does sound like the best choice.

“Ryan will file a missing person’s report. He did it back where I used to live, once. I had to skip band practice twice to work, and I didn’t have a cell phone. He couldn’t remember what smoothie place I worked at, so he thought it would be easier to just tell the cops someone had kidnapped me and was probably raping me as they spoke. I would really, really like to never have that happen again.”

“Sucks to be you then,” Mikey smirks. He might have Earl, but at least Earl is just an asshole, he’s not batshit insane.

***

“So, Lord of the Rings Risk, Clone Wars Risk, or fortieth anniversary Risk?” Mikey opens his mouth to answer, and Gerard lightly punches him in the shoulder. He doesn’t want his brother to influence the other two. 

“Can we wait on Lord of the Rings until I watch the movies?” Frank asks.

“You haven’t- of course you haven’t.” One day he’s going to sit down and make a list of a thousand movies everyone must see before they die, and make Frank go through them with a highlighter. He probably hasn’t even seen Cube. “Okay, I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that, so I don’t have to burst into tears. Brendon, Clone Wars or normal?”

“Normal.”

So square silver box it is. The paint is flecking off of the box in places from other things being set on top of it, but the game inside should still be fine. The pieces are metal so it would take a mallet to flatten them.

They end up setting up around the coffee table in the living room. It’s easier to squat around the coffee table than it is to set the board in the center of the table in the kitchen. Not to mention this way they can have the tv playing random rock music in the background instead of having to deal with the quiet of the kitchen. It takes a minute to slip the top of the box up because some of the corners are pushed downward and in some, but eventually it wiggles open with a tiny whoosh of a sound when the top finally breaks free. The board stares back at him. It’s still somewhat glossy and folding it open is always fun because Gerard gets to smile at the augmentations he added to the whale swimming in the far right corner of the board and the tatters he added to the sails of the ship sailing across the Atlantic Ocean. There’s even a red loopy scrawl of _Here there be monsters_ inked into the blue of the Pacific Ocean right over black lettering that defines the ocean as such.

Under the board there’s six different pouches, each a different color. Inside each of them are the color coded armies. Gerard takes red, as always, and Mikey takes grey. Brendon snickers as he grabs the blue, saying “normally I’d probably take yellow but if I do right now I’ll just have a Ryan flashback, and no one wants that.”

“Seriously, yellow or green or black? These choices blow. Mikey, gimme your silver.”

“No.”

“Gerard, your red then.”

Gerard snorts. “I’ve been red since the first time I ever played. I was eight. You’ll only get them out of my cold dead hand.”

“Well, probably not. If you’re cold than rigamortis would have set in already, and you wouldn’t get anything.”

“Fine. I’ll be stupid black. Fuck you guys.”

After they’re all settled with their colors it’s time to roll to see who gets to go first when setting their men down on the board. The only problem is the dice aren’t in the bottom of the box next to the still crisp mission cards. In all the years they’ve played, they rarely break out the mission cards because the game’s much more interesting if they play free form instead of having to do what one of cards tells them to. Gerard’s stumped, but Mikey leans next to him and digs in the box for the yellow pouch. He uses two fingers to loosen the black rope cording and dumps the full contents of the pouch across the board. Metallic mustard yellow infantry men, cavalry men, and tiny almost gold canons scatter everywhere, along with three dice that plink out when they hit several of the metal pieces. Gerard reaches for those while Brendon scoots closer to start scooping up all the random pieces laying about. He always forgets which colored pouch he puts the dice in. Not that it matters anymore. Crisis adverted, now they can see who goes first. Grabbing the black die, he rolls a four. Brendon gets a one, Mikey gets a one, and Frank gets a six.

Fifteen minutes later they’ve got everything set up, and Frank has cashed in twice to get eighteen men, plus his three for the beginning of the turn. He smirks and puts all twenty one on Venezuela. Mikey, who holds all of North America, glares. “make you a deal?”

“No. My black guys are attacking your silver guys. They were attracted to the shine. Maybe this wouldn’t have happened if you had given me silver.” Frank smirks as he hands Mikey the dice. 

“Argh! Get the fuck out of my country!”

“Nope. Attacking again.”

“I. Am going to. Cut. You,” Mike says slowly, enunciating each word.

“No you won’t, shaddup.” There’s not much fortification in Central America, most of his men in Greenland to protect him from Gerard’s forces. It only takes six rolls to decimate Mikey’s troops. “No bonus for you, bitch!”

Before any of the pieces can be knocked over in a scuffle, there’s the sound of a phone ringing. The ring tone is happy and sounds like something from an animated musical so it can’t be his or Mikey’s. Brendon scrambles for his phone, only to groan when he flips it open to see who’s calling.

“It’s Ryan.”

Frank looks positively gleeful when he speaks “Put him on speaker phone. Lunch was made of joy and wonder.” 

Brendon does, and then Ryan is shouting “I can see you playing one of those dwarves games with them! Why are you hanging out with Jon groupies, Brendon?”

“What?” Brendon clearly has no idea what Ryan is talking about, but it’s an odd detail to mention if Ryan’s lying. Gerard looks over at the window, and sure enough there’s the curve of a derby hat. He elbows Brendon and nods his head towards the curtain. Brendon reacts in seconds, slamming the end call button with his thumb. “Mikey, are your knives still in the kitchen?”

“I was going to wash them later,” Mikey shrugs. Gerard stands up and goes to hide them before Brendon can freak out. Mikey’s not very good at hiding items, and hiding weaponry is very important. You can’t make a good first impression if your murder weapons are all over the place.

***

Of all of the possible things to occur, Brendon will admit Ryan following him isn’t the lowest on the list. Still, he hadn’t even thought about it being a real option. Sure, after lunch had been weird back at The Weather Today but Ryan hadn’t done more than mutter to himself about cheating pricks that think they’re God while occasionally stopping to rant at random, bewildered customers when he decided to leave the back of the shop. 

Brendon should have told him then. However, it was easier to just let Ryan flail about and confuse the customers. Telling him could wait till he came in to work tomorrow. Apparently, it really can’t wait anymore though, because Ryan somehow found a way to follow him home. For a brief second thoughts of his phone having a tracker slipped in next to the battery pop up in his head. He shakes the idea away. There’s no way Ryan would be able to work a tracking device, let alone figure out a way to be stealthy enough to tag Brendon’s phone without him knowing it. 

It doesn’t take long to cross from the living room floor near the coffee table to the door. Not nearly long enough to prepare himself. Brendon reaches out his hand to twist the door knob and wonders if he should just yell out once he has it open. Knowing his luck though, Ryan won’t hear him and just continue to peep like a creeper until one of the neighbours notices him and decides to do something stupid like call the cops. So Brendon sighs and slips out the front door.

He ends up standing in the uncut grass of the yard for three minutes before Ryan even pries his gaze from the window. There’s no telling what he’s thinking. Brendon goes to say ‘Wanna come in?’ or perhaps to even start explaining everything when Ryan’s head snaps in his direction. Ryan straightens his stance before stalking off in the direction of the front door. He doesn’t say hi or even mutter curses. Brendon’s left to hurry after him. He’s almost afraid to even begin to wonder what Ryan will say the moment he reaches the front door. He always has something incredibly harsh ready on his tongue in situations he deems worthy of it. 

On the scale of Ryan’s exes rants, the words aren’t overly horrific. He just blasts into the living room -not even bothering to take off his shoes, and seriously, why must everyone walk through the muddy grass then walk on the damn carpet- points his finger in the general direction of Mikey and Frank, and shouts “did Jon tell you he loved you too before he dumped you like the man-whore he is!”

The problem is who he’s talking to. Not only are they his boyfriends, and Brendon has no idea how to bring _that_ up casually, but they’re boyfriends that don’t have personalities compatible in the slightest with an upset Ryan Ross. Sure enough, in response Frank springs up from the carpet to shout back “I like you! You have spunk!” It only gets worse from there, Frank gets close enough to extend his hand for a jaunty handshake. “I’m Frank. I don’t know who Jon is, but if you want we could crank call him and call him a manwhore?”

Ryan stares at him for a minute, glance occasionally flickering to Frank’s hand. Then, to Brendon’s complete shock, he answers “well, actually, that sounds quite good.”

This was not what he was expecting. This is actually quite worse than he was expecting. The guys already hate who they think his ex-boyfriends are. Combine that with Ryan’s nearly trademarked loathing and it’ll never end. “No. No it does not.”

Mikey giggles. Somehow Brendon is not surprised. He’s thinking about stealing Ryan’s phone from his pocket as a preemptive measure, just to be safe, when Gerard ambles back into the living room. Hopefully he didn’t shove Mikey’s knives in the fridge instead of say laying them in one of the dry dish washer racks, or even in one of the cabinet drawers. Brendon just lets the thought go. He certainly can’t say anything out loud about it.

Gerard walks over to him and leans in for a quick kiss before pulling away so he can go back to the couch and sink into it. The moment he settles into the cushions he kisses Mikey. Brendon doesn’t dare glance at Ryan because there’s no telling what shade of purple or red his cheeks are bound to be turning. Gee asks whose turn it is and Mikey scoops up the dice to indicate it’s his go. 

There’s something mildly ironic about playing a game of world conquest right now. Brendon’s not sure what he needs to do. Part of him wants to drag Ryan off somewhere to explain everything in the best detail he can while glossing over some of the finer ones. The rest of him just wants to pretend that his best friend is not about to stroke out in the middle of his living room because he’s finally met Brendon’s boyfriends without any proper introduction. Whatever decision he was tripping towards gets delayed when Frank slides closer to him and frowns for a second before wrapping around his side and tilting his head for a proper kiss. 

When Frank finally removes his tongue from his throat, he concludes with “see, you love me, even if Gerard doesn’t.”

“Dude, he’s attacking me in Iceland.” Gerard exclaims, hands waving in the attempt to explain the horror of it. “I’ll make out when I’m done stomping his motherfuckin ass! I’ll make out with everyone! Except Mikey. Attempted usurpers don’t get groped.”

“You should probably ask Ryan before you make out with him,” Mikey remarks casually before rolling his dice again.

“Fuck me in the balls,” Brendon groans, burying his face in his hands. This is not how it was supposed to go.

“Okay,” Mikey answers in the same casual way before trading it in for a far more authoritative tone. “Western U.S. to Central America, get the fuck out, get the fuck out, get the fuck out!”

Frank scowls and takes the dice Gerard hands to him in preparation to hold his region. Brendon welcomes Frank the distraction, and wouldn’t mind one of his own. As it is all he can think of is Mikey handcuffing him later tonight and doing something to his balls. And maybe it’s not good to think about sex when Ryan’s around. The last thing Brendon needs right now is to explain how his love is strong and true while he’s got an erection. And the word erection sounds like a fortification building, and crap, how is his brain roleplaying Risk infantry sex? Gerard’s probably used all the edible paint, and there’s no other way he can be blue.

Brendon shakes his head to get the image out, and grabs Ryan’s hand to drag him into the kitchen. It’s the only safe place. The bedrooms are entirely out of the question. Even if the toys are back in the chest, which is extremely unlikely, he’s got too many good associations and his body has pretty much conditioned itself to get hard when he walks in. He’d really like to lose his erection for this conversation, not make it worse. 

He decides to go with a tv example. It’s the best way of relating this in a way Ryan might understand, he’s sort of a HBO groupie. "You know that show Big Love? Well, what if they were all living in the same house? And there was no religion? And there were no kids?"

It would be almost comical, the way Ryan tilts his head a little, if this wasn’t the future of his two most important relationships. Brendon knows that gesture, it’s the ‘I can't be hearing what I think I’m hearing’ gesture. It’s not good, but it’s not the worst result either.

“Like, what if it wasn't a guy with several wives?” Brendon's fiddling with the hem of his shirt and at any other time Ryan would tell him to stop, but he’s so gone he doesn’t care. “What if it was a guy with other guys, but they would totally get married if they could but they can’t?” Brendon can see it on Ryan’s face the moment he realises he’s not joking. “But that's not, like, their fault, you know? Because they _would_ , you know?”

Ryan looks at him a second then asks very hesitantly, which sort of freaks Brendon out because Ryan's never been hesitant a day in his life, "you want to get married to those three guys?"

Brendon smiles wistfully, “yeah.”

Gerard speaks up from the arch of the kitchen door, “well, we'd marry each other too, it wouldn't just be him with three husbands. His analogy's pretty flawed.” Wow, no wonder Gerard is so good at strangling people; he’s incredibly stealth.

***

Frank stares at the painted metal men set up across the Risk board before glancing towards the kitchen. Gerard got up a few minutes ago and Frank’s wondering if he should go crash the party they’re obviously starting in there since no one’s walked back out again. When Mikey drifts in that direction, he follows. 

There’s chatter going on between Brendon and Ryan, with Gerard adding things here and there, when they slip past the archway. Ryan looks confused, slightly perplexed by the situation, or maybe he’s just normally related to fish flopping about on dry land. Frank doesn’t really know. Besides today, he’s never really met the other guy.

Perhaps it’s a dickish thing to do, but Frank can’t really stop himself from finding a discarded spoon randomly laying about near the sink so he can pick it up. In his socked feet, he slips and slides across the clean kitchen tiles in a sloppy line. Thinking of the most ridiculous song to belt into the spoon isn’t hard to come up with. He could feasibly pick any song by Whitney Houston, but that would defeat the purpose of acting like a love struck fool, since everyone knows Bobby Brown's awful.

He’s just getting to _“I’m begging you to beg me”_ -when in doubt always default to Cheap Trick-when his feet slide out from under him and he crashes into Brendon enough for the both of them to crumple to the floor. Half straddling him, Brendon’s grinning and Frank doesn’t give a shit if he looks like a tool because sometimes there’s not any other way to break the tension. 

“That wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t scrubbed the floor,” Mikey says blandly. Frank giggles as Brendon scrambles to his feet and begins to lecture Mikey on the inherent goodness of a sparkling floor. It’s sort of funny to watch the Brendon vs Ways/Walnut house battles, and not just because half the time Mikey evades the whole thing by suggesting sex. It’s something that they’ll just never learn, like Wiley E Coyote will never stop ramming into mountains painted to look like tunnels.

Once everyone realises he’s not getting up until someone sticks out a gentlemanly hand, Brendon sighs and crouches. He tugs hard and Frank goes with the momentum, letting it make him skitter on the linoleum again. Brendon catches him and pins him to the cabinets with an exasperated grin, and Frank takes the opportunity to lean up and kiss Brendon’s neck. 

“Dude! Frank! Ryan’s right there!” Brendon squirms before finally pulling away. Frank mentally takes back his previous living room statement. He definitely does not like Ryan if Ryan makes Brendon deny kissing.

Mikey takes the sudden dislike a step further, and calls him out. “What is he, your mom?”

Ryan doesn’t take that well. He crosses his arms, fingertips lightly resting on his cufflinks. “Well, considering his mother kicked him out when he kissed a boy, no.”

Ryan’s tone is harsh, but Frank’s pretty sure it’s not as much that as the actual words that make Brendon droop. It’s not really a physical action, his back doesn’t slump and his knuckles don’t touch the ground. But Frank can see it, and he’s sure Mikey and Gerard can too, and if Ryan’s anywhere near as good a friend as Brendon makes him out to be, he should see it too. Unsure of what else to do, Frank throws his arms around Brendon and squeezes him until he has difficulty breathing. He wants Brendon to know how enthusiastic his love is.

Gerard and Mikey on the other hand have taken the _correct the criminal_ over the _help the victim_ approach. He can’t see Mikey, but there’s no doubt in his mind that the tallest of his boyfriends is glaring, a look which is honestly frightening even when you don’t know how many people he’s killed. And he can hear Gerard grind out “we don’t talk about the past in this house. If you can’t respect that, you need to leave.”

“You know, you’re the first of his boyfriends that hasn’t tried to give me a great first impression, like I love him and you love him so let’s be best friends.”

“That’s because we love him, we don’t give a shit about you.” Frank’s words are muffled by Brendon’s shoulder, but he’s sure they’re clear enough to get the message across.

“And if I shut up?”

“Then we’d be happy to teach you how to play Risk. There’s no dwarves, I promise. You can be yellow or green.”

Once they’re all back in the living room, the board gets wiped of cards and infantry men. There’s discussion of how unfair it would be for them to just randomly donate land to Ryan because he’d be scattered about the continents with no choice of where he might want to be, so in the end they just start over. Frank tries to stealthily swap his black for Mikey’s silver and fails.

He giggles when Ryan just stares at the tiny, metallic yellow game pieces he shook out into his palm. Brendon had leaned over and snagged the yellow pouch from the box for him. Frank doesn’t know if Ryan has an aversion to green or if he’s just extremely fond of weirdly tinted shades of yellow. Though from the way he’s staring at the little yellow men in his palm, it’s almost as if he’s unsure of his feelings on the subject. That, or he’s worried the metallic paint is going to rub off on his fingers and poison him. 

Whatever the reason is, Ryan just keeps staring pensively at the pieces until Brendon sighs and scoops the little yellow men back into their bag. The moment he has them safely in their home, he switches the yellow pouch for the blue one. Ryan doesn’t look ecstatic about the change but he accepts the die when it’s his turn to see when he gets to go. 

It’s around the time that Mikey’s shouting at Brendon to get the fuck out of Australia that Ryan speaks up. This time he doesn’t say anything antagonising, whether about Brendon’s ex, or about unnecessary past memories. It’s just strange. “So, how long have you had that hoodie?”

“Uh,” Frank looks down, trying to remember when he got it. He can’t remember, but it was before Jeff decided to specialise in heroin. “A while.”

“Are those decorative tears?”

He seems suspicious, so Frank decides to answer honestly. “No. This crackhead tried to stab me.”

Ryan laughs, obviously thinking he’s joking. Brendon starts to hyperventilate, and Frank figures he probably shouldn’t talk about his drug past with Ryan around. Gerard and Mikey just seem upset, though Gerard is leaning towards sad, and Mikey angry. He probably doesn’t like the idea of people who aren’t him cutting people. He tends to be territorial about his knives.

“While grunge has it’s place, I have some embroidery floss in my emergency kit in my car. I could update the look with a nice ladder chain? Maybe a modified plain blanket?”

“Sure,” Frank shrugs before stripping off his hoodie. He doesn’t really care, and if Ryan does might as well let it go. There’s no reason to get his boyfriend’s best friend upset, not when he’s going to be spending time here. After all, it’s not like Brendon has an apartment to have his friends over in. He broke his lease months ago, before Frank even knew them. 

The only problem will be if Ryan decides he wants to sleep over. The guest bedroom is full of the belongings that begin to add up, Frank doubts the bed is even visible now. It’s the price you pay for living together; they’re tightly packed until some day in the future when they buy a bigger house to share. Not that they need to, four people on a three person couch is good enough for all of them. Who needs more room, when that means you can’t touch your loved ones at all times? He would never trade shelving for an opportunity to nap on Gerard, or hold Brendon’s hand, or bite Mikey’s neck, and he’s positive they feel the same. He doesn’t have to ask, he just knows. The more you love someone, the less you have to say out loud.


End file.
